The owner of Vale Sports Club is considering the purchase of a Middletown property, on which he would consolidate his indoor and outdoor recreational facilities. Zach Eddinger said if a special exception application is approved by the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission, he would purchase the 17-acre property at 49 Randolph Road for the new […]
The owner of Vale Sports Club is considering the purchase of a Middletown property, on which he would consolidate his indoor and outdoor recreational facilities.
Zach Eddinger said if a special exception application is approved by the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission, he would purchase the 17-acre property at 49 Randolph Road for the new Vale Sports Club location.Â
The property currently includes vacant land and a 28,300-square-foot commercial building.
The new facility would have two outdoor synthetic turf fields with lights, in addition to 21,000 square feet of indoor sports space to serve Vale’s youth sports clubs, which have about 700 players from Middletown and surrounding areas, Eddinger said.Â
The fields will be used for practices, games and occasional tournaments.
Eddinger has run Vale Sports, which specializes in soccer teams, clinics, camps and tournaments, since 2018. The club currently rents 40,000 square feet of indoor space at 1280 Newfield St., in Middletown. Vale also rents fields in Meriden and Cromwell and at Xavier High School in Middletown, and has basketball court space in Berlin.Â
“It is our goal to run our organization out of one location,” Eddinger said in his project application.Â
His vision for the new facility goes beyond sports fields. Eddinger has a multiphase master plan for the property that includes redeveloping a 28,300-square-foot industrial warehouse formerly owned by Connecticut Light and Power into a mixed-use entertainment/commercial venue, ideally with residential units above, he said.
He would lease out a number of commercial sites in the new space to ventures such as a brewery, and have space for food trucks. There could also be a gym for residents, ice cream shop, barber and office-share spaces, he said.
The property was last sold in December 2021 for $2.1 million to 49 Randolph Road Middletown LLC.Â
Eddinger is still in the exploratory phase of seeking the zoning approval and possibly buying the property, so he has not yet determined a total investment for the project.
Phase one would include the soccer fields and sports facility, followed by the commercial and residential development.
