‘The place to be.’ A look inside Lexington Sporting Club’s new soccer-specific stadium.
Lexington Sporting Club is about to move into its new digs.
It’s been a time of rapid change for the professional soccer club, with a new pro women’s team set to debut later this month in the USL Super League and with the recent announcement that its pro men’s team will soon move up a level from USL League One to the USL Championship in 2025.
A major catalyst for both of these moves has been the construction of a new, 7,500-seat soccer-specific stadium in Lexington along Athens Boonesboro Road near Interstate 75.
The new stadium will host its first match Sept. 8, when the new LSC pro women’s soccer team hosts the Tampa Bay Sun. LSC is one of eight teams that will participate in the first season of the new USL Super League, a top-tier pro women’s soccer league that’s been sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation as a Division I league.
This means the Super League is on the same level as the already-established National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
The LSC men’s team is expected to play the final three home games of its 2024 USL League One regular season at the new stadium, starting Sept. 14.
New Lexington stadium is part of a larger soccer complex
The new LSC stadium is part of a larger soccer complex at the same location which already features seven training and youth fields. According to LSC, this represents an $80 million investment by the team’s ownership, which is led by majority owner Bill Shively.
On Tuesday — during an event that saw LSC announce its upcoming men’s soccer move to the USL Championship — that league’s president, Jeremy Alumbaugh, described the new venue as a “transformational stadium project.”
“It will be the place to be on a Saturday night for the men’s team, or the women’s team, and a place that the youth can look over and have aspirations, and again, have that ambition, to perhaps be there someday,” Alumbaugh said.
Since Lexington Sporting Club’s men’s team began play in spring 2023, its home matches have been held at Toyota Stadium, a 5,000-seat venue on the campus of Georgetown College in Georgetown. Toyota Stadium also hosts the football, lacrosse and soccer teams for Georgetown College, an NAIA school about 13 miles north of Lexington.
That site has also been used to host home matches for LSC’s women’s team in the USL W League, a pre-professional league.
With the upcoming opening of Lexington’s new stadium, Kentucky’s professional soccer organizations will now all play in soccer-specific stadiums.
Louisville City of the USL Championship and Racing Louisville of the NWSL both play at Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood. That stadium opened in 2020.
When speaking to the Herald-Leader last fall, Shively, LSC’s majority owner, said the new stadium was to be built in a “modular” fashion and would have the ability to expand to 11,000 seats.
Lexington Sporting Club built new soccer stadium in less than one year
Lexington Sporting Club first announced plans for its new stadium last October. The club had already built youth sports fields adjacent to the stadium site.
When speaking at a formal event announcing plans for the stadium last fall, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said $92.4 million is estimated to be generated over the next decade thanks to the stadium and further development, such as nearby hotels and restaurants.
LSC officials have previously told the Herald-Leader they anticipate the stadium and soccer complex will lead to additional business development along the Athens Boonesboro corridor.
“We want this to be a destination place,” Vince Gabbert, LSC’s president, told the Herald-Leader last fall. “Both from a stadium standpoint, but also when people come for tournaments we want them to be able to have as much turnkey and as much all-in-one solutions as possible.”
“The investment by Lexington Sporting Club has created a world-class entertainment destination for our professional soccer folks,” Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton said Tuesday.
LSC explored several options for the location of its new stadium.
Among the locations that were floated as potential sites for a soccer-specific stadium for the franchise were the High Street parking lot of Central Bank Center across from Rupp Arena in downtown Lexington, near Newtown Pike and at Brannon Crossing near the Fayette County-Jessamine County line.
Shively previously told the Herald-Leader the Newtown Pike site was a preferred location for the stadium.
As part of the process that preceded stadium construction, the Lexington council in April 2023 voted to approve a zone change on Athens Boonesboro Road for a proposed new soccer stadium. The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted 10-2 to approve a zone change from a B-5 business to a B-3 business zone at 5380 and 5354 Athens Boonesboro Road, as well as a conditional use permit that would allow for a sports stadium, training center, medical building and restaurants on approximately 30 acres at that location.
That vote came following a nearly five-hour public hearing.
“I think when this (stadium) is done … I think the people in Lexington and the soccer fans and just the people that are fans of Lexington in general are going to be excited about this,” Alumbaugh, the USL Championship president, said.
Herald-Leader Staff Writer Beth Musgrave contributed to this article.
This story was originally published August 16, 2024 at 6:53 AM.
