WHEATFIELD, N.Y. — Don't let the desolate look of the old Summit Park Mall fool you.
"I mean it was the place to be," said Neal Turvey, director of the Niagara International Sports & Entertainment (NISE) complex.
And it might be once again.
Sears was one of the last stores in the Summit Park Mall to close back in 2018. In its place is the NISE complex, which opened in December 2019.
"We're flying," Turvey said. "We see 160-170 kids on a weeknight. We'll see 280 on a weekend, and we just passed 300 kids this past Saturday."
Only open during those hours, it offers a space for kids to train their skills in basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball, just to name a few.
It's just the start of a massive project to turn the mall into a sports hub, which Turvey and Toronto based developer Zoran Cocov and are working on together.
"There's nothing like youth sports for doing that," Turvey said. "The kids all play organized sports now and we wanted to take it and create something where the kids can come in and do something very exciting local, especially when you have the Niagara Falls tag. Everyone knows where Niagara Falls is."
Phase one costs about $40 million. The next part of it includes adding fieldhouses, which will begin in the spring.
"The fieldhouses are what creates the foot traffic for everything else we're doing," Turvey said.
Next will come restaurants, a sporting goods store, a Niagara Sports Hall of Fame, a health club and 20 outdoor fields. Turvey says phase one will be complete within two to three years.
Eventually you'll also see a hotel and water park.
Turvey says everyone seems to be on board with the plans so far.
"People stop in everyday and say 'oh we're so happy to see something going on here,'" Turvey said.
All of them hoping to make a center for sports and entertainment the new place to be.