Sports Emporium takes a run at the end zone

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

June 16, 2025

LAWRENCE – “Northern Wisconsin’s largest sports facility,” per sportsemporiumgb.com, is about to get even larger after the local business broke ground on its forthcoming, new-and-improved indoor complex.

Derek Rhodes, executive director of Sports Emporium, said in 2021, “just after COVID-19,” he and his team noticed they were growing out of their current – soon-to-be-former – location in De Pere.

“We saw a ton of growth and (desire) to utilize our facility,” he said, “so we started to look at expanding our current footprint.”

That’s when the Sports Emporium, Rhodes said, began its collaboration with the Town of Lawrence.

“Through conversations with town (officials), they let us know about the new Lawrence Parkway and this endeavor that they were looking to do,” he said. “They were trying to create the sports corridor of the Greater Green Bay Area (and) Brown County.”

At the same time, Rhodes said he and his team started to raise money for the new facility.

“We started to fundraise in 2021 – talking to our community partners (and) trying to see if we (could) make this project come to reality,” he said. “We’ve been doing that for the past four years, and late in 2024, we got to a point where we felt like we were in a great spot, financially, to move forward with the project.”

Though Sports Emporium still has a ways to go to meet its fundraising goals, Rhodes said the business felt ready to break ground on the project.

“We are still continuing to pursue our capital campaign, but felt like we were in a good spot to start with the building process and to really get this thing moving forward,” he said.

Storied past, bright future

Founded in 1987 by his father, Rhodes said Sports Emporium got its start as a small, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, community soccer club.

In 2006, he said the former owner of the company’s current De Pere-based facility decided they were going to sell it.

“(If that had happened) there wouldn’t have been an opportunity for our players, our athletes, to be active year-round and have that opportunity to be athletic and stay healthy,” he said. “At that point, we, as a club, (decided), ‘Hey, we have to step up and we have to purchase this building (to) make sure we keep the doors open.’ So, that’s what we did.”

Over the last two decades, Rhodes said the Sports Emporium has grown and expanded its reach to serve the athletic needs of children and families across Northeast Wisconsin.

“Since 2006, we’ve continued to grow our business and what we do, our community outreach and the number of athletes that we cater to and that come through our doors,” he said.

Even more athletes will soon have the opportunity to come through the doors of the Sports Emporium, Rhodes said, with the completion of its new, multi-million dollar facility expected in November of this year.

“The project (cost) started at $5 million and now has moved to $9 million,” he said. “So, the needle has continued to move.”

Despite the exponential increase in construction costs, Rhodes said the project is on track thanks to the Sport Emporium’s countless community partners.

“We’ve had a ton of support from a lot of our partners within the community and businesses that have stepped up to support what we’re doing and support our mission,” he said. “We’re very excited about that – continuing to pursue more of those partnerships and develop the partnerships we already have.”

The Green Bay Blizzard indoor football team – a long-standing partner of the Sports Emporium – Rhodes said, will begin practicing at the company’s new facility in Lawrence once it’s complete, just like they do at its current De Pere location.

“(For) more than a decade, they’ve utilized our current space as their home practice facility,” he said. “So, they’ll continue to do that, and that’s really what our partnership is all about – the team’s commitment over the next 10 years to be here and to continue to utilize our space.”

Community contribution, support

Even though the organization started as a soccer club, Rhodes said Sports Emporium’s programming had to evolve as customer demands did.

“(We were) primarily just soccer-focused at the beginning,” he said. “I’ve been here now 20 years – (previously) as a general manager and now as the executive director – and over that time, we continued to develop both (our soccer and football program) areas.”

The Sports Emporium, Rhodes said, also partners with youth programs across the state – offering them a year-round facility to train their athletes and “further their programs.”

“It’s not only our programming that we run through the facility,” he said. “A lot of these other youth programs utilize the space to further serve their constituents as well.”

With the completion of its new facility, Rhodes said the Sports Emporium will be able to work and partner with even more youth teams.

“We are currently operating a 35,000-square-foot, turf-only facility,” he said. “It’s just two fields – one is a larger field and one is a very outdated, older, training-type field, where it’s not very large at all. We’ll be expanding to 104,000 square feet.”

The One Wisconsin Volleyball Club, Rhodes said, will be operating out of the Sports Emporium’s new location with 40,000 square feet housing “volleyball courts plus a workout facility.”

“The other 60,000-64,000 square feet is going to be our turf space where we’ll have two unboarded, state-of-the-art turf fields, one additional smaller training turf field, as well as a training space with squat racks, turf for speed, agility, strength, a massive cafe, arcade, additional party rooms, (etc.),” he said.

With the complex now serving the needs of athletes playing a wide variety of sports – including lacrosse and even rugby – Rhodes said the Sports Emporium’s customer base has expanded significantly.

“(We’re) really growing in the amount of customers (we serve and) the diversity of (our) customer base,” he said.

The Sports Emporium’s ability to serve more customers, Rhodes said, depended on the business’s ability to, likewise, expand its physical footprint.

“We’ve had a waiting list for classes in the winter for our youth football leagues (for quite some time),” he said. “That’s really where we saw a desire to expand. We have all these waiting lists throughout our busy part of the year, so we really needed to offer more of our programming, and offer additional opportunities for those youth programs that we partner with to expand their offerings as well, through those winter months.”

The company’s growth, however, Rhodes said, would not have been possible without the community’s continued support of the Sports Emporium and its mission.

“(We appreciate) the Town of Lawrence (and) how involved they were in the project – getting it to this point and helping us every step of the way,” he said. “The (Town) Board has (also) been so impactful in helping us get this project over the hump. Any hurdles we had along the way, they supported us each step there.”

For updates on the facility or to donate to Sports Emporium’s capital campaign, visit its website or social media pages.