Nice place! NBPA to build new NYC headquarters
The new regime at the NBA players union wanted to build a headquarters where players would want to visit.
So, on Wednesday, the NBPA announced that its new home, on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, will feature a full indoor basketball court and a training and workout facility.
“We’re trying to build a modern-day union, and that involves a lot of thinking outside the box,” said former NBA player Roger Mason, who is the union’s director of player relations. “We want our players to be around us, so we’re providing them with an environment where they can do what they do.”
NBPA executive director Michele Roberts said in a statement that she hopes the players will find the new union offices as “a home away from home.”
The 47,000-square foot space in midtown Manhattan, which will only be open to union employees and current and former players, has a locker room with a hot and cold tub and a treadmill submerged in water for those rehabbing. The workout facilities will be run by Joe Rogowski, who was named the union’s director of sports medicine and research in July.
The building also will have space for meetings and for player education classes on topics ranging from finance to franchise management, Mason said.
Mason did not disclose how much the union is paying for the 21-year lease of its new space, which hasn’t broken ground, but he said it is projected to be finished by April 2016. The union reportedly sold its former building in Harlem for $21 million, six times more than what it was bought for in 2007, according to Bloomberg.
Mason did say that despite the ambitious new space, player dues will not rise.
“In the past, the union might not have been unified as much as it could have been,” Mason said. “This is one way to bring us all together. To encourage players to visit our campus. We have an eye for the future and that includes exploring different opportunities like this.”
The search to find a facility in New York City that would also fit a basketball court was exhaustive. Mason said the union looked at more than 170 spaces.
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