The soccer training facility is at 1400 Commerce Drive, Franklin. The facility will offer year-round sports training and be the home of Soccer Central Academy.
Photos provided by city of Franklin
A fledgling year-round sports training business now has a home in Franklin.
With variance approval in hand, experienced soccer coach Trevor Perry is bringing to Franklin a business model he started while living in Upstate New York. He was unanimously approved by the Franklin Board of Zoning Appeals Wednesday to use a space at 1400 Commerce Parkway that is currently zoned Industrial General for sports training.
He has plans to convert a space at the building owned by Rapid Prototyping into an indoor turf field to offer year-round sports training to local athletes. The first sport to be trained there will be Perry’s own soccer training business, Soccer Central Academy, which currently has 32 trainees signed up, he said.
Over the next few years, the plan is to expand the sports training facility into the entirety of the building by June 2025. The phases will begin in November, with the second anticipated to start in July 2024.
The building currently is a storage area for Rapid Prototyping, but the local manufacturer is planning to move items currently stored there to an addition the company plans to add to its current manufacturing space. The company was approved for a tax abatement to complete this project in September.
Indiana MENTOR also has a Franklin office in the building, but the adult daycare program is planning to move out of the space at the end of 2024, Perry said.
When the full building is available the plan is to offer both indoor turf playing fields and batting cages. The building would be open to all local teams and players who want to practice year-round, he said.
Perry is also working with city planners on adding an outdoor practice field in the open land next to the building.
The variance was approved with the condition that the facility be used for sports training, but not tournaments. With only 50 available parking spaces on the site, the BZA’s attorney Lynn Gray wanted to make sure it was in writing that this was not allowed.
Perry told the board he was not considering holding any tournaments there other than house-league competitions with 3v3 groups of trainees playing against each other. The variance condition states house-league tournaments are allowed.
People who knew about his success in New York encouraged him to offer the same in Franklin, he said. Perry opened an indoor training center called South Jeff Sportsplex in Adams, New York in 2020. The business had many sports practicing there and even became a hub for cheerleading, he said.
The Elkhart native sold the business there when his family decided to move back to Indiana. He’s now settled with his family in Franklin and hoping to replicate the business model to help local athletes, he said.
The local soccer community at both the high school level and the youth sports level encouraged him to bring year-round training here so students don’t have to travel, as the nearest soccer training centers are in Bargersville and Indianapolis. He was turned onto the Rapid Prototyping space because one of the company’s owners is a Franklin Youth Soccer Association board member, he said.
Getting a place of his own to hold training was also the only viable way to build Soccer Central Academy. He said playing fields at local schools are too booked to allow outside groups practice space with enough regularity for the venture to be successful and build clients.
