How much will the Carolina Panthers’ new headquarters move the needle?

How much will the Carolina Panthers’ new headquarters in Rock Hill be beneficial for the franchise and community once completed?

As the Carolina Panthers will play at AT&T Stadium on Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys have been at The Star all week in preparation for this Week 4 showdown. Driving on I-77 recently, I took an unplanned detour to visit the construction site of their new headquarters to see how things are progressing – as close as I could get anyway.

On a warm dry day, dust was floating in the air as construction equipment was moving around, steel beams were going up, and cranes dotted the horizon. Slowly but surely, the Panthers’ dreams are becoming a reality.

The idea started in the summer of 1987. By December of that year, Panthers founding owner Jerry Richardson was all-in on bringing the NFL to the Carolinas. And on October 26, 1993, the expansion franchise was born.

In 1995, the team’s first-ever game was held in Canton, Ohio, the birthplace of modern American football, followed by the inaugural season at Clemson University while Bank of America Stadium was under construction.

Opening its doors in time for the 1996 season, BoA is now 25 years old. In the grand scheme of building projects, the facility is quite young. However, in today’s NFL, this is the eighth oldest venue and ranked by ESPN as the 24th best.

There is something special about the feeling of a football game in the middle of autumn with 70,000 of your closest friends in an open-air stadium. Weather not only impacts how fans dress but can alter gameplay with severe downpours, blizzards, gusts of wind, or extreme heat.

Today though, newer stadiums have become multi-use venues, recruiting tools, and engagement opportunities with fans.

Stadiums are being built to be larger, grander, and more technologically advanced than ever before. We are seeing more enclosed spaces to eliminate weather as a game factor and increase the use of the facility throughout the year.

Owner David Tepper has big plans for the Carolina Panthers.

When David Tepper purchased the Panthers for $2.275 billion in 2018, many thought he would eventually build a state-of-the-art facility. Something to rival that of the Minnesota Vikings and Dallas Cowboys.

Currently, BoA is an open-air venue with practice fields across the way. The Star, home of the Cowboys operations away from AT&T Stadium, and Minnesota’s TCO Performance Center are both more than a few fields and offices in a bland building.

These have become destination venues for fans to be engulfed in their team’s history and feel more connected through various forms of interaction and engagement. As the game of football has evolved from its simplest state to a year-round culture, owners are willing to spend on a destination facility as their home base of operations.

The upcoming Panthers headquarters will be a world-class operation with its first phase set to open in 2023. At its completion, the venue will house the franchise’s offices, indoor and outdoor practice fields, an orthopedic sports medicine facility, corporate office space, residential space, and retail.

At its hub, this will be a football facility to house all operations of the franchise while drawing in the community on a daily basis from office space, housing, and event space capable of hosting high school games, community events, concerts, parks, pathways, dining, and more.

This is also a recruiting tool.

Free agents are looking beyond just their contract to see what a team can offer them. Weather, nightlife, access or proximity to vacation spots, tax rates, and a media market to grow a player’s brand are fixed variables a team cannot control.

To focus on variables they can, these venues are a wonderful avenue to show a free agent they are wanted and will be well taken care of.

When the ambitious plans were announced, many fans and community members were upset the team was moving out of Charlotte. While true, games will remain at BoA and this is merely a short drive away.

Ultimately, the Panthers’ headquarters is a win-win for the franchise, fans, and community, and I know I will be taking a tour once open to the public.