NEAR WEST SIDE – The Chicago Fire’s new soccer training center on the Near West Side is opening next month, team officials said Tuesday.

The new “world-class” center includes two and a half hybrid grass/turf pitches, three synthetic turf pitches, a 10,000-square-foot inflatable dome and a 56,000-square-foot performance center containing the soccer club’s athletic and medical facilities.

Construction is nearly done and the soccer club expects its professional team to start training at the Near West Side center before the Major League Soccer season begins in late February. Plans call for the center to officially open in March.

The opening of the $80 million center comes after a controversial deal between the city, the Chicago Housing Authority and the Chicago Fire. Since plans for the site were announced in 2022, housing activists and concerned neighbors pushed back against the deal that allowed land promised for new housing to be used for the professional soccer training center.

The site, which is bounded by Roosevelt Road, Ashland Avenue, 14th Street and Loomis Street, was once part of the Addams, Brooks, Loomis and Abbott public housing developments — together known as the ABLA Homes.

The club’s professional, reserve and five academy teams will soon move out of their suburban Bridgeview home to begin training at the site.

“We were fortunate to build this facility, being able to see the [Chicago] skyline and reminding the players who they’re playing for every day,” said Paul Caldwell, Chicago Fire’s senior vice president of community programs, engagement and facilities.

The center offers players world-class facilities like those found in the Premier League, Bundesliga and La Liga MX, he said. Architecture firm Crawford Architects designed the complex.

The center houses a gym with a 40-meter running track, sauna, cryotherapy and recovery rooms, hydro pools and a nutrition bar to boost players’ performance and recovery. It includes locker rooms, equipment rooms, a cafeteria, laundry room, offices, training quarters, a state-of-the-art game analysis room, conference rooms, classrooms, a parking lot and a media room — all the facilities needed to run the team on site.

The center is named after the Chicago medical group Endeavor Health, which operates in the Near West Side center, providing medical and orthopedic care to players. In 2024, Endeavor Health was announced as the club’s naming rights partner, team officials said. Under the lease deal for the land, the CHA let the Fire keep all the proceeds from naming rights and sponsorship deals at the facility.

With a world-class training hub in the city, the club aims to attract, develop and bring more Chicago players.

“The goal is that this will be a catalyst for more kids from the city itself,” Caldwell said.

Despite pushback and legal challenges from neighbors and housing activists, officials and team owners have called the facility a “win” for the Near West Side.

Chicago Fire executives say the new athletic facility could create employment opportunities and boost economic development in the neighborhood.

As part of its deal with the CHA, the team agreed to invest $8 million in the community. The money will be used to convert a CHA warehouse at the ABLA Homes complex into a community center and add a parking lot at West 15th Street and South Ashland Avenue that was requested by neighbors and the ABLA Homes Local Advisory Council, Caldwell said.

“The residents have really chosen what they want to be put in there,” he said. “And the key to that, too, is that they actually control the space.”

The agreement also calls for investing more than $3 million toward renovating properties in the ABLA Homes. The CHA will use the income generated from the lease to continue renovations and build more public housing, he said.

The soccer club plans to also run an after-school program, summer camps and open practice days that will invite neighbors to the facility. It also committed to producing an annual neighborhood event at the performance center and offering 10 paid internships each year. The internships will aim to expose young people to careers in sports ranging from graphic design, marketing, sports science, nutrition, data analysis, business intelligence, ticket sales and soccer community programs, Caldwell said.

“The goal is that we really utilize this facility for soccer to do good in the neighborhood,” he said.

Before the Fire deal, the CHA had already promised to build hundreds of additional units to replace ABLA properties that were torn down two decades ago. The agency remains well short of those goals.