Village OKs plans for Gateway Sports Academy

Plans for the Gateway Sports Academy, which is expected to draw 17,000 players and 42,500 spectators to Saukville for 40 sports tournaments annually, were approved by the Village of Saukville Plan Commission earlier this month.

Construction of the building in the Northern Gateway Community Collective on the village’s east side will start “within one to two months” and be completed next year, Design Construction Manager Ian McCain of Ansay Development said.

“We have already started to order components for the building,” he said.

The sports center is expected to create 15 to 20 jobs and add $8.3 million in value to the village. It will have four basketball courts, nine basketball shooting cages, six volleyball courts, eight pickleball courts, team rooms and a sports medicine center.

Gateway Academy is being developed by four partners — Joe Chapman, Carolyn Chapman, Tyler Mueller, and Brian Hebein — from Chapman Sports Academy.

Founder Joe Chapman, a former Marquette University basketball player, said he founded the academy in 2018 after deciding not to go back overseas to continue his 11-year professional basketball career but instead coach the sport and run Amateur Athletic Union teams.

Since then, Chapman said, the academy  has grown from four to 88 teams and is ready to expand from its current Mequon location.

“We saw the need for another gym with the amount of people we had,” he said.

Gateway will be considerably larger than the academy’s Mequon location and serve as its home, Chapman said.

“It will be bigger and have a mission behind it with Mel’s,” he said, referring to Mel’s Charities, which has worked with the developers and businesses to find jobs and housing for adults with intellectual and development disabilities at Gateway.

All businesses planning to move into Northern Gateway have signed a pledge to hire individuals with disabilities, and of the 620 planned housing units, a quarter will be for adults with disabilities.

Chapman said he will hire people with disabilities to staff the front desk and manage scheduling.

The Gateway Academy’s location has helped spur interest from big-name tournament leagues, Chapman said.

“Being right off the highway is attracting lots of national sports conventions and associations,” he said.

That interest will translate into business for the local community as well, he said, since the academy will have a “play and stay” policy requiring teams that travel more than 75 miles to remain in the community overnight.

“One of the cool things is having a hotel right next to us,” he said about the development’s planned 110-room hotel. Businesses in surrounding areas will also benefit from the influx of guests, he said.

In addition to basketball, the gym will have both pickleball and volleyball courts, Chapman said.

“You need both for a complete indoor gym,” he said.

Pickleball is particularly exciting as it has a symbiotic relationship with the gym’s other sports, Chapman said.

“When kids are in school, adults can play pickleball,” he said.

Chapman said the new building will complement the academy’s goal of building complete athletes, including academics.

“One of the new aspects to our facility will be a team room where students can receive tutoring,” he said.

Another of the gym’s innovations will be nine basketball cages — similar to baseball batting cages — featuring Smart TV systems, statistic trackers and training videos.

The cages are the first of their kind in the area, Mueller, who will be the facility director and director of youth recreation at Gateway, said.

“The closest shooting cages are The Driveway in Green Bay, or Shoot 360 in Chicago,” he said.

Mueller said he expects the cages to be popular.

“Once players and families see the cages, they will take off,” he said.

One hiccup in the project was an I-43 setback issue that caused several months delay in the project’s approval.

After “a minor redesign” that shaved off a few feet from the front canopy, the problem is resolved, McCain said, noting the redesign added two parking spaces and windows on the western side.

“I think it looks better,” he said.

Construction of Northern Gateway’s anchor business, a 129,000-square-foot American Orthodontics manufacturing building, was recently completed. The facility will start production “very soon,” Village President Andy Hebein said.

Additionally, the development’s first phase of apartments are under construction.

Ansay, along with Three Leaf Partners, is developing the 99-acre Northern Gateway project that is expected to house a 30-acre business park, day care facility and as many as 620 housing units in addition to the gym, manufacturing facility and charity headquarters.