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basketball courts, a 2,800-square-foot player locker room, and state-of-the-art performance, wellness, recovery, and hydrotherapy rooms.
be completed until early October, will include a media production studio, 7,000-square-foot roof deck, 10,000 square feet of mixed-use commercial space, and more.
The basketball training facility, which is close to completion, was conceived to be a 24/7 destination for elite NBA and front office talent with amenities including a player restaurant, private balcony, film, and press room.
Ken Jones, a steward with Roma Steel in Camden, says the whole project is on time and hopefully will be operational through most of the upcoming NBA season. He currently has about 100 iron workers on the project.
Quite frankly, this new complex will be the showcase of NBA training facilities – and it is sitting right here in Giles’ hometown.
“The iron workers and other union workers have been kept busy with the 76ers’ facility and the other Camden projects we are working on,” he said. “We are all excited to see the opening of the 76ers new facility – we’re all great fans as well as proud workers! Our crews have done a great job with everything on site.”
“Everything about this practice site has big time written all over it. Wish I had the chance to be a part of this when I was a player,” admitted Giles, a basketball junkie who played briefly at West Virginia University in the 1990s. From a family and history outlook, Giles is glad he gets to work right here at home. “My mom and dad worked at Campbell’s Soup Company for over 40 years and provided my family with a great home and learning environment. It’d been great being able to raise my family here by living and working here.” This new practice site will indeed be one of the jewels of the Camden waterfront. The enormous first-floor practice area will feature two regulation courts, a huge weight room, a lap pool that will sit next to a hot tub and a cold tub, an oversized locker room, and hydration stations. There will also be offices for coach Brett Brown, his staff and for general manager Bryan Colangelo along with a video room. The second floor consists of a restaurant that will specialize in healthy food, a chef on duty for 12 hours a day, and a patio that overlooks the Camden waterfront with the Philadelphia skyline behind it. The second floor also features a game room in which the players can shoot pool, watch television and play video games. The adjoining business operations offices, which may not
And the 76ers training complex has indeed been a cornerstone of the “Camden Rising” revival boom undertaken by local politicians, including Rep. Donald Norcross. The beneficiaries have been local union workers, including many Camden City residents like Giles who have taken part in apprenticeship training programs offered by local unions to help provide them careers they never dreamed of attaining. Giles, who has moved on to become steward at the Holtec Technology building site since June, jumped at the opportunity to learn the trades when Camden city construction projects were first advertised several years ago. “I saw an advertisement that the unions wanted Camden City residents to apply for the construction jobs and I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I took this very seriously from a career path. I looked into all the training and apprenticeship programs so I could make this a real career. “And now I‘m directly working with at least a half dozen city residents who did exactly what I did. We made great careers out of this. Plus there are dozens more city residents enrolled in the same programs we were. This is all a real boost for the city.” Photos by Mike Plunkett Photos by Curt Hudson
www.sjunions.com
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