Norton Healthcare Sports & Learning Center, West Louisville. Opened 2021 on a former tobacco-plant site that was almost entirely paved. Imagery: Google Earth.

The Armory, Washington Heights, in the middle of its block. There is no parking lot; the subway is a block away. Imagery: Google Earth.

Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center, on the Roxbury Community College campus. Opened 1995. Imagery: Google Earth.

Birmingham CrossPlex, on the former State Fairgrounds, with its parking lots. Opened 2011. Imagery: Google Earth.

What we found

• We could not find a publicly available independent impact study online for any of the four. Every impact figure we found comes from the venue, its city or the local tourism bureau. Birmingham's ranges from $13 million to $100 million, depending on who is speaking.

• The food and shopping moved inside. At each center, the spending a meet brings happens mostly in the building. In Louisville, a taco shop from across the street now runs a stand inside. The Cheney plan already puts a 3,350-square-foot café, 4,100 square feet of running retail, a Track Club store and concessions inside, with the lobby on Georgia Avenue.

• Where a center came with a promise to lift the neighborhood, the center did fine and the promised development lagged. In Louisville, the 2017 plan listed retail, restaurant and hotel space on the site. As of October 2025, the land beside the center was still "empty space," with athletic fields planned for it instead. In Birmingham, the venue's traffic drew chain tenants into the venue's own strip, after the city-backed development there went through bankruptcy.

• Each loses money or is carried by the public. Louisville has lost money every year since it opened, about $3.0 million last year. The Armory lost about $2.0 million last year. Roxbury runs a deficit of about $2 million a year that the state covers, and Birmingham budgets about $3.5 to $4 million a year for its center.

• Cheney would be the only one built on open green space. The others went up on a paved brownfield, a century-old armory, a college campus and old fairgrounds. None took a field the public uses every day.

The Fort Washington Avenue Armory, built in 1911. The indoor track opened inside it in 1993. Photo: Americasroof, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Cheney Field today: the open north half and the Olympic warmup track. Imagery: Google Earth.

For Georgia Avenue

The open field brings neighbors past Georgia Avenue every day. An indoor track center brings crowds on event days, and at the four centers the food and shopping went inside the building, to its café, store and concessions.

• Louisville: the center has a national hospitality partner, and a convenience store, a taco shop and a café inside. Food trucks park outside on event days.

• Birmingham: fifteen years on, the strip next to the CrossPlex is full, with a chain hotel, Starbucks, Domino's, a bank branch and a Jack's. We found one or two independents among them. The venue's traffic drew chains into its own strip. We found little sign that it brought customers to the independents already there.

• New York and Boston: we found no reporting on nearby businesses either way.

If the Cheney center's café carries one local shop's products, that helps one business, and the rest of the avenue competes with it. Whatever the Track Club has told businesses about Georgia Avenue isn't in its letter of intent with APS.

Parking

The two centers with their own lots have about one space for every five seats: Louisville has 750 spaces for about 4,000 seats, and Birmingham more than 900 for 5,000. The two without lots sit next to a subway station.

The Cheney plan has about 150 spaces for about 3,100 seats, one for every twenty. A full event day would bring roughly 930 to 1,250 cars (our calculation, using the standard planning figures of about 2.5 people per car and 0.30 to 0.33 spaces per arena seat). The Track Club says it would use a Georgia State lot for special events. That's the Track Club's word; it isn't in the letter of intent.

The Track Club's November report lists the "APS Board Vote" as its first next step and its traffic and parking study second.

What was written down held. What wasn't, didn't.

At Roxbury, Massachusetts law says the center is free for public high school track programs. Thirty years later, Boston public school athletes still pay nothing. When the college charged high school leagues about $100,000 in 2017–19, a 2021 state audit caught it. But the understanding that Boston would "benefit first," as the Boston City Council described the city–state understanding in 2024, was never written down. By 2023, Boston teams could practice only from 2:30 to 3:30 on meet days, while suburban districts held the afternoons. A unanimous Council resolution (2023), a hearing (2024) and two state bills sent to study: no change as of 2025.

The Cheney letter of intent writes down free hours for APS teams. The Track Club's November report adds free access for Summerhill seniors and youth, $20 a month for other Summerhill residents, and 105 "contemplated" community hours a week on the outdoor track. Those are in a report, not in the letter of intent or a lease.

Who pays when it loses money

• Louisville: the nonprofit owner, which has lost money every year since opening.

• New York: the nonprofit operator, with City money for the track and programs.

• Roxbury: the state, about $2 million a year.

• Birmingham: the city, about $3.5 to $4 million a year. It also budgeted about $900,000 to cover bonds it had backed for the development next door.

• Cheney: under the letter of intent, the Track Club's rent to APS is cut in half (years 4 to 10) or by a quarter (years 11 to 50) in any year the Track Club as a whole shows no profit.

What cuts the other way

• Louisville and Birmingham are public-money projects. The Track Club says Cheney would be paid for with donations, tax credits and corporate partnerships, and no City or TAD funds. The money pattern applies only if public money or credit turns out to be involved.

• Some owners did see more customers on meet days. A Louisville taco-shop owner said a big meet "brings a lot of customers right next door to where we are." A Birmingham clothing-store owner called the CrossPlex "both good and bad for us" in 2016, and said in 2022 that the district was "growing at an incredible rate."

• The Armory and Roxbury serve tens of thousands of public school athletes for free. The Track Club's letter of intent gives APS teams free hours too.

• Birmingham's strip is full today, and the block across the road filled in during 2025 and 2026, with chains.