WINDSOR — With much of the Future Legends Sports Complex shuttered or unsafe for play, Windsor officials are considering spending millions of dollars to provide new athletic facilities for the growing community.
In a study session Monday, members of the Windsor Town Board discussed several possibilities for adding new sports fields: a public-private partnership involving an organization led by Ryan Spilborghs, a former Colorado Rockies player, broadcaster and co-founder of Future Legends; and a proposal that would see the facilities built by local developer Martin Lind; or a move that would have the town build and operate fields itself.
“What we’re facing is a complex problem,” Windsor’s deputy town manager Eric Lucas said, “ a problem of lack of field space in Windsor and in Northern Colorado.” There’s “a growing demand” from participants in town-organized athletics and from private teams and leagues both inside the community and beyond, he said. But Windsor has no town-owned or -operated lighted fields.
“Compounding (the challenge of finding enough field space to meet demand) is the imminent and now real loss of Future Legends sports park,” Lucas said. “… We will not use Future Legends (for town-organized athletics) — not because we don’t have access, but because the playing conditions are unsafe and unplayable.”
The vision for Future Legends, a 186-acre sports and events facility on Diamond Valley Drive north of Eastman Park Drive, was to make the complex a destination to host sporting events for youth and professional sports in Northern Colorado. However, the stadium, domed pickleball and volleyball courts and surrounding areas at the troubled complex — currently managed by a court-appointed receiver — have been shut down by the Town of Windsor and the Weld District Court because of safety concerns, and a credit union recently moved to foreclose on the complex, listing more than $52 million it says it’s owed.
Spilborghs, according to media reports and town documents, has been a stakeholder in the Future Legends venture for years. Posts on Future Legends’ website and social media have referred to Spilborghs, who was drafted by the Rockies in 2002 and made his Major League debut three years later, as a Future Legends co-founder, as does his LinkedIn profile.
Precisely what Spilborghs’ role with Future Legends is or has been over the last half-decade or so is unclear, as Future Legends managing partner Jeff Katofsky has largely been the public face of the business.
On Friday, Spilborghs said he is “technically a co-founder, but as far as decision-making, I have no decision-making rights. It’s Jeff Katofsky, and I do try to talk with him on a weekly basis.
Spilborghs said that lately, there’s nothing he can do.
“I don’t have a solution for Jeff or for Future Legends. I look at my P3 model as a possible solution, but it was shunned because it would take a little longer … it goes at the pace of politics, so it’s slow-moving.”
In early 2024, Spilborghs approached Windsor leaders with a pitch to provide the town with new sports facilities through a public-private partnership, or “P3,” involving a nonprofit organization that Spilborghs operates.
Exactly how that P3 model would work is not well-defined in town documents, but the broad strokes appear to involve Windsor providing land or conferring use of land, on which Spilborghs’ group would build the fields and allow the town as much access as needed to host youth and adult sporting events. Spilborghs’ group would sell field sponsorships and would be permitted to rent out the facilities during times when not otherwise in use.
Windsor town manager Shane Hale said that town staffers will work with “Spilly and his team and get the numbers on paper … they’ll look at the numbers and make sure that it pencils out.”
The initial plan would be for two grass fields to be converted to artificial turf, Hale said. The decision will come back to the town board, and they may want to take a formal vote, Hale added.
“It’s a budget decision. Do we spend the money, and do we spend the money now?” Hale asked rhetorically.
He put the cost for the turf for the two fields at “a little north of $2 million.” Chimney Park already has one artificial turf field “and staff is really happy with it,” Hale said. It can be used for soccer and football as well as baseball, he said.
Spilborghs told Windsor officials that the nonprofit group through which he could facilitate the construction of ball fields is named the Esperanza Fields Foundation after his late mother. The foundation does not appear to have much — if any — an online presence, but the entity is registered with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. Originally incorporated in 2018 as the Rocky Mountain Sports Park Foundation, the organization’s name was changed to Future Legends Foundation in 2020, before becoming the Esperanza Fields Foundation in April, public records show.
Spilborghs said Friday that the foundation “has nothing to do with Future Legends. It’s completely separate.” The foundation’s mission statement is to build the community — one ballfield at a time, he said. Not only is the nonprofit named after his mom, but it’s also his way of giving back to the community, he said.
Spilborghs said he wants to find corporate sponsors to support the foundation’s mission, too.
“It’s not about being a professional athlete; it’s not about making a profit from a competitive sports model,” Spilborghs said. “I found that sports brings a lot of people together. It’s great for family time and mental health and team-oriented lessons that I think are necessary for kids to experience. It’s necessary to experience failure and win together and have successes together.”
Spilborghs sees the private-public partnership model as one that he can work on with other communities around Colorado and the nation. He said the financing model is used in various sports arenas.
“The P3 is simply a vehicle for us to help you get into the market,” Spilborghs told Windsor officials during Monday’s study session. Despite information in a town memo that appears to suggest the contrary, Windsor would “not have to use us for programming or anything. (The fields would be) town-owned, so everything is in your court.”
A slide shown to town officials this week read in part: “Tonight’s Pitch: We offer a faster, risk-free solution. The town pays only when fields are done. If they like this model, they can replicate it elsewhere.”
A scoreboard rests in weeds at Future Legends complex in Windsor in August of 2024. (Sharon Dunn / BizWest)Once an agreement is reached, Spilborghs said that he and his partners “can build out your fields in about eight weeks. We could get fields this year.”
If Windsor were to go it alone, town staff estimate that the soonest teams would have access to new fields is fall 2026.
During Monday’s study session, Spilborghs was not questioned by Windsor leaders directly about his role in Future Legends, but that project was mentioned several times.
“This is not Future Legends,” Spilborghs said of his proposal, drawing an awkward chuckle from the room. “This is not something where we’re going to be put in that situation. I’m simply a vehicle for you to get these fields done this year.”
Town officials appeared to acknowledge that there could be some messaging or public-relations challenges inherent in such a partnership. But that acknowledgement does not appear to be a deal-breaker.
“Other than the public perception, is there any downside?” Windsor town board member Lainie Peltz asked during Monday’s study session. “It feels like it’s too good to be true.”
Fellow board member Brian Jones agreed, “I had the exact thought — it sounds too good to be true to do the P3.”
The immediate response from city staff did not directly address those “too good to be true” comments.
Spilborghs initially pitched a partnership with Windsor in January, and at that time, town officials agreed to consider the proposal and instructed Spilborghs “to come back to us with more of a fully baked model,” Lucas said.
Not long after Spilborghs’ January presentation to town leaders, “we were contacted by Martin Lind and the Water Valley Co.,” Lucas said. “They also were noticing the lack of field space in the community,” and discussed with Windsor officials the potential for a “scaled-back version” of a sports facility at Labue Park off of Crossroads Boulevard — “grassing the whole park, put in a gravel road and throw some lights up and an irrigation system that maybe sits on top of the ground.”
Reached Thursday afternoon, Lind noted that “that property belongs to Windsor. I sold it to them years ago.”
Water Valley “offered to help them a year ago, but they had other visions,” Lind said. “If they were to ask, yeah, we would help.”
He said the need for grass fields should come before more-permanent development of the parks.
“There’s just no grass available. I’d like to see Windsor put some grass in for the kids,” Lind said. “If I were king, I would put in a whole bunch of grass, with temporary bathrooms.
“This idea that everything’s got to be perfect for a kid to play causes paralysis,” he said. “If you need every single chandelier to be hung before a kid can go play, it kills progress.
“Instead, just build 20 or 30 acres of grass and let ’em go play. Then build it as it grows.”
In addition to new fields at Labue Park, town officials are considering North Campus Park as a site for athletic facilities. Or the town could add a lighted field alongside existing facilities, perhaps at Chimney Park.
“We have sufficient dollars in our park development fund to pay for a $12 million project,” Lucas said. “If we stay under $14 million, we’re safe.”
As the city engages in its capital-improvements planning process, staff and officials “could try to explore a little bit more of the P3 (for some of the town’s more-ambitious parks and recreation projects),” Hale said during Monday’s work session. “I just get nervous about going that all-in.”
Adding facilities to Chimney Park could serve as a more-modest test case for a public-private partnership, Windsor officials said.
“I’d like to test the P3 on something small, which is Chimney Park,” Windsor mayor pro tem Ron Steinbach said. “Let’s make sure the model works on something small before we jump into a big project with them. I’m a little nervous about that.”
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