Fishers Officials Liteboxed By Sports Complex Developer

Oops, it happened again. A developer promising a pie-in-the-sky project appears to have fooled another group of local officials all too eager to give away our tax dollars like they grow on trees. That absurd, $77 million sports facility proposed for Fishers by a little-known developer on a 20-acre site remains the pipe dream it was when it was first announced more than a year ago by Fishers officials.

The IBJ is reporting that GK Sports Development, LLC of Carmel has failed to obtain financing for its project, which included a 4200-seat arena with an ice rink, a fieldhouse with 32 basketball and volleyball fields, a football field, an indoor track, a baseball training center and a 600-space parking garage. Meanwhile, the developer is pitching a nearly identical project in suburban Madison, Wisconsin where it is seeking $25 million in TIF funding.

One of the developer's principals, Barry Kiesel, has also been plagued by personal financial woes. He was ordered to pay a collection agency more than $10,000 in unpaid debt on a Sears credit card in January. In another legal skirmish, which included allegations of fraud over a construction project, he has agreed to pay $87,332. Documents filed in that court case indicated that Kiesel expected to be earning $2,000 per week once his first project was completed, along with a development fee of at least $1 million.

Fishers officials were pledging a 10-year tax abatement for the project and an $805,000 annual lease payment to the developer to use the proposed facility for local youth sports use. GK Sports Development claimed it was already booking events for 2016 when it pitched the proposal to Fishers' officials for a facility it said would attract Olympic athletes, NCAA division II and III teams and a minor league hockey team. Fishers officials held up approval of the deal until the developer secured its financing. "It�s in the developer�s court as to whether or not it will move forward," Mayor Scott Fadness told the IBJ. "I know they are still very aggressively pursuing their financing."