Spooky Nook Sports [ Champion Mill ] F
or more than three years, Hamilton residents have been watching, with bated breath, the massive construction occurring on North B Street along the Great Miami River. What was formerly the vacant site of the old Champion Paper mill became the groundbreaking site of Spooky Nook Champion Mill in 2018. When construction finishes, Spooky Nook Champion Mill will be the largest sports complex in North America and the third-largest in the world, at 1+ million square feet. Before 2018, the first and only Spooky Nook Sports complex was in Manheim, Pennsylvania near Lancaster. The "Spooky Nook" name is a reference to Spooky Nook Road, the road on which the Pennsylvania location was built. For the new Hamilton location, “Champion Mill" was added to the name not only to act as a differentiator but also to honor the past and traditions of the region.
Highlights from the Spooky Nook Champion Mill timeline: • November 2016: Hamilton, Ohio is named the frontrunner by the
28 Plan Hamilton
Spooky Nook Sports developer and majority owner, Sam Beiler, for the new Spooky Nook Sports location, second after Pennsylvania. • October 25, 2018: Crews break ground and begin construction for Spooky Nook Sports complex in Hamilton, two weeks after the Hamilton City Council approves and signs a development agreement with Spooky Nook, investing more than $26 million for loans, construction, utility, and road improvements. • January 2019: Hamilton City Council closes parts of Rhea and Warwick avenues near North B Street. Road sections are replaced and referred to as Champion Boulevard. • Mid-March 2019: Hamilton government officials, business owners, and non-profit leaders visit the 700,000-square-foot Pennsylvania Spooky Nook location. • March 2020: $171 million in financing is secured for Spooky Nook Champion Mill, in spite of challenges posed by the COVID pandemic and declaration of a national emergency. • June 2020: A large stretch of North B Street closes for about 600 days to allow construction crews to work on the Spooky Nook Sports Champion
Mill indoor sports complex and convention center. • December 2020: Announcement of a partnership between Spooky Nook Sports and Kai Sotto, internationally known Filipino professional basketball player, to establish the "Kaiju Academy,” a basketball academy to be housed within the Hamilton location for mentoring and training young athletes. • March 27, 2021: Strong winds cause damage to the building designated for the Spooky Nook Champion Mill indoor turf field. All structural steel beams collapse, but no one is injured. • September 2021: Sam Beiler announces that Spooky Nook Champion Mill is booked every weekend from April to August 2022. • J anuary 2022: Sam Beiler announces Mill 1, the indoor sports complex part of Spooky Nook Champion Mill, will not open in late March 2022 as anticipated, and Spooky Nook Sports is unable to provide an estimate of when it will happen. Mill 2, the part of the facility known as Champion Mill Conference Center, remains on schedule with an end-of-March targeted completion date.
