SEATTLE — Lisa Brummel walks around Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood now with a little extra pep in her step.
“You have to take the risk on the investment because you believe it will pay off,” she said. “We took the risk.”
Now, as she enters the Seattle Storm Team Headquarters and Performance Center, Brummel proudly shows where the franchise has been and where it plans to go in the future.
Back in 2018, she and her fellow co-owners started kicking around an idea to build a team owned facility. After the team won the WNBA title in the “Wubble” in 2020, the talks became serious.
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Seventy-two hours after we won the championship, I got a note from Jenny Gilder, my co-owner, who said, ‘We have to build a practice facility now.’ That’s when we started. We had a standard plan, put some courts down, make sure there’s a locker room, make sure there’s facilities for the players,” she said, “And then we thought more about it’s like, what would make this really different?
They invested $64 million in private capital to pay for the Interbay project, which also involved a code change to allow them to build a facility that is 50,000 square feet. There are two indoor courts and other outdoor courts, plus a gym, player’s lounge, pools, and other technology.
We’ve got some cameras up here. Important,” said Brummel. “We are able to track the player’s performance at each practice, and they can track their own if we’re not here. It’s all done through facial recognition and people and player identification. So, not wearables like you might have thought. It’s the cameras that allow us to track how many shots you take, where you take them, from the angle of your knees. Are you making your shots from this area or that area.
In the gym, there is special equipment to allow players to rehab on-site instead of somewhere else, and a kitchen with a chef so they don’t have to find food during a break.
While that all sounds like it should be commonplace, it wasn’t until the Storm and Las Vegas Aces built their facilities around the same time. The Storm had been practicing in a gym in the bowels of the Royal Brougham Pavilion at Seattle Pacific University with a separate headquarters space. The Storm and Aces are the two most valuable franchises in the WNBA, at around $150 million. The league is also expanding.
“There has been incredible growth across all realms of the WNBA, and the Storm are proud to have been one of the leaders in getting practice facility built,” said Storm COO Rohre Titcomb as she sat in the franchise’s main conference room, which overlooks the courts.
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The table in the room is made out of old KeyArena flooring, where they won three of the titles. More flooring can be found in the entrance way to the courts. Titcomb notes how the banners are prominently displayed, along with the four WNBA trophies, and how it has all helped in recruiting both on and off the floor.
“When you walk in these front doors, you see our players putting the work in, and you see the opportunity to be able to be a part of a franchise like this, and we are seeing great talent being attracted,” said Titcomb. “This building has been a phenomenal part and a catalyst to really accelerate that growth.”
Brummel is still beaming about the decision, especially at a time when the league is drawing new fans, as evidenced by TV viewership and ratings.
“When you put a building like this in, it separates you from other franchises, and we’re more than happy to do that,” she said with a smile.