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Credit: Larry Peplin for Crain’s Detroit Business
The Detroit City FC soccer teams currently play in Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck. They are looking to build a new 15,000-seat stadum in southwest Detroit.
The Detroit City FC soccer organization is looking to raise another $15 million as its final bucket of equity for a new stadium in southwest Detroit.
The $15 million raise, revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday, would bring the team to $50 million in equity after it secured $10 million in a March equity raise and had previously privately secured an undisclosed $25 million in equity.
The $15 million tranche seeks investors willing to commit a minimum of $250,000, according to the filing. The previous $10 million raise sought a minimum of $500,000 from investors.
Sean Mann, co-owner, co-founder and CEO of Detroit City FC, said Thursday that the $15 million raise is expected to be the final tranche.
“By filing this, we can start collecting checks on conversations we’ve been having here as things come together for the project,” Mann said.
Detroit City FC, which has men’s, women’s and youth soccer clubs, has been assembling land around Michigan Avenue and 20th Street in southwest Detroit for over a year for the large-scale project, kicking off in March 2024 with the $6.5 million purchase of the to-be-razed former Southwest Detroit Hospital site.
Other acquisitions came in the following months, and most recently in April, the Detroit Land Bank Authority signed off on the team purchasing about two-thirds of an acre across nine parcels for a surface parking lot.
The team has embarked on fundraising in the past, although not to this scale.
Detroit City FC crowd-funded in 2015 about $750,000 from about 500 supporters to rehab Keyworth Stadium, its current home in Hamtramck. Those investors, in essence, made miniature loans in the amount of $250 to $50,000 to the team that were repaid with interest.
“That facilitated our move from Cass Tech,” Mann said.
In 2020, the team raised $1.5 million from roughly 2,700 investors contributing $125 to $50,000, giving them small ownership stakes in the team, amounting to a total of 10% of its overall stock.
Credit: Progressive Companies
A conceptual rendering of the proposed Detroit City FC stadium in southwest Detroit. The rendering was included in a Detroit Land Bank Authority document from April and is expected to change.
The team’s latest project, to be anchored by a 15,000-seat stadium, would also include things like retail and residential uses spread out across more than 17 acres the team has bought.
The goal is to complete the new stadium in time for the teams to play their 2027 seasons there, although that may be ambitious given that large-scale construction projects typically take at least 18 months to complete.
Demolition on the 250,000-square-foot vacant hospital property is expected to begin in July after crews pump out large amounts of standing water that have accumulated in its basement over the years.
Earlier this year, the team received approval to be reimbursed for about $5.92 million for demolition of the hospital through brownfield tax-increment financing; that 21-year public subsidy requires one more approval before being finalized.
Staff in the Detroit office of Grand Rapids-based Progressive Companies is working on predevelopment schematics. The Detroit-based architecture and engineering firm SmithGroup is working on the site plan, while Detroit-based Ideal Group is performing construction.
The new stadium is anticipated to generate new revenue streams for the team, including things like jersey sponsorships and stadium naming rights, among others.
Le Rouge — the team’s nickname — began playing at Keyworth in 2016 under a 10-year, $1 per year lease with Hamtramck Public Schools. A team spokesperson said in mid-May 2024 that a lease extension is in place that allows DCFC to continue using Keyworth until the new stadium is built.
When it started using Keyworth, DCFC raised more than $700,000 to invest in improvements, including lighting, bleachers, locker rooms and restrooms. Prior to the 2016 season, DCFC played at Cass Technical High School’s 2,500-seat stadium for four seasons.
DCFC plays in the Tampa, Fla.-based USL Championship league, the professional soccer league ranked under Major League Soccer by the United States Soccer Federation, the sport’s governing body in the U.S. The team began playing in that league in 2022.
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