St. Louis CITY reveals plans for centralized downtown campus

When St. Louis CITY SC begins Major League Soccer play in 2023, it will inhabit a campus that features much more than just a brand new stadium.

The stadium, which is under construction south of Market Street and west of Union Station in downtown St. Louis, also will include a team headquarters, three practice fields and a training and performance center — and that’s just for the players. Also planned are a team store and fan pavilion.

“Our updated stadium district plan not only gives us a distinctive home-field advantage by creating a central hub for CITY, but it also expands our presence and will continue to act as a catalyst for more development in Downtown West,” said Carolyn Kindle Betz, St. Louis CITY SC chief executive officer.

When completed, St. Louis CITY will be the only MLS club with its team headquarters, practice facility, training fields and stadium all in one centralized downtown location.

Among the specific plans for the campus:

• A two-story, public-facing pavilion with both indoor and outdoor public gathering spaces including the team store, a café and space for events and conferences.

• A world-class athletic training and performance center with three training fields (two grass, one field turf) and a keeper-specific training area.

• Team headquarters in a renovated Union Square Plaza building at 326 S. 21st Street.

The stadium district will create a central downtown hub for public gatherings that bookends the Gateway Mall. In terms of soccer, the development’s goal is to drive peak athletic training and performance.

“A key piece in building this team from the ground up is creating an accessible and state-of-the-art training facility for our players,” CITY sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel said. “We were very intentional about hosting our first team and academy teams in the same training facility to provide our young academy players a glimpse at what they’re training for. This will fuel their motivation and ambition as we work toward building the best academy and development system in North America to continuously funnel high-level talent into our first team.”

The training center, team pavilion and team headquarters are scheduled to be finished around the same time as the stadium in 2022. The MLS expansion team will begin play the next year.