What’s inside “The Rock” — the Panthers’ new $1 billion training facility in Rock Hill

The Carolina Panthers’ new facility in Rock Hill, South Carolina won’t be ready to open until summer 2023, but the team shared Tuesday more of a look into what to expect from the project.

The Panthers broke ground on the 240-acre property in July and begun the three-year long work that will create one of, if not the largest such facility in the NFL.

While the team is building a 622,654-square-foot practice facility, it will also be a sports-and-entertainment venue with the potential to hold a variety of events, from soccer games to high school championships and corporate events and concerts.

The two newest NFL team facilities built by the Cowboys and Vikings are smaller than what the Panthers have planned. The Ford Center at The Star, the Cowboys’ indoor athletic facility is 510,000 square-feet, and the Vikings’ TCO Performance Center is 277,000 square feet.

Initial plans to open the first phase of the new facility in August 2022 were scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Panthers are targeting May or early summer 2023 as their move-in date. The Panthers purchased the more than 240 acres off Interstate 77 for more $16 million in late March to build their new home. South Carolina has offered about $115 million in incentives for the team to move there from their home at Bank of America Stadium.

In total, the Panthers are investing more than $1 billion to develop and build the facility.

Vice President-COO of the Panthers Tom Hart, York County and the City of Rock Hill hosted a virtual town hall Tuesday with residents of Rock Hill and other interested parties to share more about the next stages. Here is what we learned about the new facility.

The overall Panthers facility

The first priority for the Panthers is to give the team a brand new facility to work in with many of the amenities that do not already exist in Charlotte.

“We want to build a state-of-the-art football facility and training facility for the Panthers,” Hart said. “Right now, we’re at Bank of America Stadium, we’re very constrained, we’re very limited and we don’t have state-of-the-art facilities for our players.”

The team internally refers to the football headquarters at the Rock Hill facility as “The Rock.”

“It’s been designed to evoke images of a rock coming out of the ground, you can see its angular, its form, its shape, its color,” Hart said.

The Rock will have four new outdoor “soccer pitches and football fields” — three natural grass, one synthetic turf — and one synthetic turf indoor field. The indoor field, referred to as “The Pavilion,” will also have seating for 500, and while the focus of its use will be for the team’s practices, it could also be used for community and other events.

The outdoor practice fields, referred to as “The Park,” is a 5,000-seat outdoor, multipurpose stadium that can hold concerts and a variety of other public events, including high school football games, which takes up an additional 113,559 square-feet. There is also flexible seating available on the other side of the field. The team is building ticketing windows for holding future events.

“The Piazza” area will be a public plaza designed for events, a forecourt for The Park, and the future location of restaurants and other businesses.

The indoor and outdoor fields are separated by two 90-foot wide by 80-foot tall sliding doors that create an opening between the two areas.

“This whole space is flexible,” Hart said. “It can range anywhere from 5,000 to perhaps 20,000 (seats), with flexible, scalable and temporary seats.”

In addition, there will be all of the necessities to run a football team, such as weight rooms and meetings rooms, and a 18,000-square-foot dining hall that includes a 4,000-square-foot teaching/training kitchen, VIP areas, public tour areas and public lobbies.

What’s inside “The Rock”

The Panthers shared more detailed information on what will be inside the facility itself.

There are four levels to the headquarters building. The first is for football operations, locker rooms and weight rooms.

The areas that the players use the most stretch along the primary length of the building with views of the outdoor practice field just feet away and natural light. At Bank of America Stadium, the team’s facilities are largely enclosed and the practice fields are a short walk or golf-cart ride away.

The second and third floors are for the team’s corporate offices and coaching rooms. The fourth floor will be open for other uses.

“The fourth level, which is about 70,000 square feet, is available for outside tenants and outside users,” Hart said. “That might be sports medicine, that might be corporate users, that might be hospitality, that’s basically available for the future.”

The team has been working with Atrium Health to design about 38,000 square feet of space for public rehabilitation and therapy, advanced imaging and diagnostics in conjunction with a sports medicine, medical office building that is being built separately. The space within “The Rock” will be used by the public and the team.

A 20,000-square-foot weight room is being constructed that includes offices, a fuel bar and a cardio mezzanine. There will be an area for hydrotherapy, including a steam room, sauna and infrared sauna, as part of a 3,000-square-foot recovery suite. A variety of hydrotherapy pools are also being constructed.

The rest of the facility

The Hutchison family, which had owned the land The Rock is being built on, had owned the land since 1840 before selling it to the Panthers. The parties involved in building the new facility, including the Hutchisons, have put a priority on leaving some of the land undeveloped.

“We want to preserve the great heritage of the Hutchinson land,” Hart said. “As I mentioned, 240 acres, there is historical significance to its location, there’s lots of streams and lots of topography changes, and we wanted to make sure that this was pedestrian friendly, this was biker friendly and this was sustainable.”

There will be approximately 2-1/2 miles of public trails that will connect to a larger Rock Hill path system. The goal was to preserve many of the trees in the area (more than 60 acres) and keep some of the natural features that the public will be able to explore. That will include access to a five-acre lake-and-water feature that will provide stormwater management and irrigation for the project.

Residential and other retail spaces are also part of future plans.

What’s next, and what about soccer?

Construction crews are just starting the foundations and will not start putting up structural steel until Spring 2021. At peak times, they anticipate having 700-800 workers on site and a total of about 1,200-1,300 over the course of the project.

During the nearly 1-hour town hall Tuesday that was conducted via Zoom, the Panthers received at least five questions regarding the Charlotte FC Major League Soccer club also using the facility, but those questions were not addressed. (A moderator viewed the questions before presenting them to Hart.)

Charlotte FC’s inaugural season is scheduled for 2021 and the club, also owned by Panthers owner David Tepper, originally planned to build headquarters at the old Eastland Mall site in Charlotte.

The Panthers’ goal is to host the team’s 2023 NFL training camp in Rock Hill.

“We saw the vision at this site. We knew from the very beginning that it was more than just a football facility,” Hart said. “We saw it as the great start of a massive development, of an idea that we could create infrastructure off I-77 to improve things for the city of Rock Hill, and to create a platform for additional development over the next several years. Corporate HQs, perhaps specialized residential, mixed use development, certainly youth athletics and other kind of athletic events. And this is where we’re going to go.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 9:46 PM.

Alaina Getzenberg

The Charlotte Observer

Alaina covers the Carolina Panthers for The Charlotte Observer. Before coming to Charlotte, she worked at The Dallas Morning News and The NFL Today on CBS. Support my work with a digital subscription