'A game-changer': Titans' expansion project will nearly double size of team headquarters

Erik Bacharach | The Tennessean

The Titans quite literally have outgrown their space.

An ever-growing staff and overall operation forced the organization to build into broom closets and storage areas at its team headquarters. Now it's thinking bigger.

The Titans are expanding Saint Thomas Sports Park, home to their practice facility and corporate office since 1999. Construction began this week on the 60,000-square-foot project, team executives told The Tennessean. It will almost double the size of the team’s MetroCenter headquarters and includes a three-story building situated along the first of three existing practice fields.

Since controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk assumed her role in 2015, the Titans have made a slew of significant overhauls to Saint Thomas Sports Park, from a new weight room, locker room and training room to revamping the cafeteria this past offseason.

The organization’s latest upgrade, which includes renovations of spaces within the existing 75,000-square-foot building, is what Burke Nihill, Titans vice president and general counsel, called the “finishing touch.”

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“The coaches offices will be the right space. The team room will be the right space, so it'll be a bigger auditorium that can house the entire football operation during training camp, which hasn't been the case in the last few years,” said Nihill, who has coordinated the expansion project.

The goal: modernization and optimization.

It's a notable investment in the city, and one that suggests the Titans' long-term plan is to stay here. The team's Nissan Stadium lease expires in 2028.

Nihill wouldn’t comment on specific costs but said, “It’s a significant investment that our ownership group is making.”

Nihill said the organization hopes to complete the project within the next two years, but he said the team is flexible with its timeline so as not to disturb the football schedule.

Logistically, a bigger space was necessary for a staff that has ballooned under Strunk’s watch; in the past five years, the organization has seen a 50% personnel growth.

“We've added so many members to the Titans family over the past several years,” Strunk said in a statement to The Tennessean. “Evolving our workplace makes perfect sense from both a growth standpoint as well as maximizing our team’s overall effectiveness. This new facility will ultimately create the modern environment that will enable further success.”

And it puts the vast majority of the Titans’ staff under one roof. Currently, the team’s ticket sales group works out of Nissan Stadium, and about 15 employees work from a different MetroCenter office after the Titans leased additional space in the area to accommodate growth.

Among the other items planned as part of the expansion: a new draft room inside the three-story building; a 2,000-square-foot event space that leads out onto a 2,300-square-foot rooftop deck; and a two-story, 39,000-square-foot parking garage that will add 100 parking spaces to the facility.

The new building will be adjacent to the existing building at Saint Thomas Sports Park to form an “L," replacing an area currently occupied by a maintenance shed.

The Titans are collaborating on the project with Smallwood Nickle Architects, which developed the renderings of the proposed space. PBG Builders Inc. was hired as the contractor.

Nihill said the Titans' first conversations about an expansion date back “a year or two.” A decision was made in August to move forward with the project after Strunk had dispatched a team of employees from both the business and football staffs to tour other NFL facilities – and even one college facility – around the country.

“We went to some new facilities that had started from scratch,” Nihill said. “We went to some facilities that had been kind of retrofit into existing buildings and came back to Amy and reported what we saw and what we thought was possible here.

“It’s going to be a game-changer.”

Nihill expects the expansion to be felt dramatically at every level of the organization, including, of course, the players.

“Big shouts out to Amy for believing in the Titans and what we have going on here as an organization," Titans safety Kevin Byard said Monday. "To want to put her money in the organization to upgrade, from the locker room to the cafeteria, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to do some more stuff, I think it just shows us as players that she believes in what we have going on here. It’s a great feeling to have."

Reach Erik Bacharach at ebacharach@tennessean.com and on Twitter @ErikBacharach.