Beyond The Cup

RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center brings the soccer world to Morris Township.

The sprawling performance center offers every amenity to help Red Bulls players reach and maintain their peak athletic efficiencies. (Photo/Red Bulls)

Under a gray sky accented by a biting wind and a threat of rain, several hundred people await the official ribbon-cutting of Red Bull New York’s state-of-the-art training center.

Among the dignitaries and sponsors sit soccer icons Jürgen Klopp, Thierry Henry, and Michael Bradley, as well as Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber and former First Lady of New Jersey Tammy Murphy. Before any of the speakers step to the podium, the morning is broken by the sound of a low-flying propeller plane.

Everyone looks up. The aircraft remains invisible above the blanket of clouds. After a moment, two bodies plunge from the mist. They pull their rip cords, and parachutes emblazoned with “Red Bull” pop open, allowing them to spiral toward the pristine pitch while trailing streams of red smoke.

It’s hard to ignore the trenchant metaphor: The RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center seemingly fell from the sky and landed on this 80-acre plot in Morris Township just in time for the World Cup, when it will serve as the home base for Brazil’s national team. It’s true that construction didn’t begin until 2024 and wrapped in less than 24 months, but projects like this don’t just happen.

During the ceremony, Red Bull New York President Marc de Grandpré suggests the

88,000-square-foot facility—spread across three

buildings that will house the Red Bulls, their second-division team, Red Bull New York II; Red Bull New York Academy, which feeds, educates, and trains eight teams across multiple age groups; and a wide-ranging youth program— took more like 10 years.

He may be underselling it.

A GENERATIONAL PLAN

Senior Director of Facilities Dan Shemesh has been with Red Bull for nearly 17 years. He says that when he interviewed for the job, the team had just completed what is now known as Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, and he was told that planning for a performance center had already begun.

Asked what took so long, Shemesh, who served on the project team, takes a deep breath and launches into an explanation. Sixteen minutes later, he concludes with the phrase: “That’s it in a nutshell.”

The massive nut that came out of that shell is impressive enough that Brazil claimed it as a home base for the World Cup. “They wanted the best environment, and our Field House has its own locker room and meeting rooms, and practice area,” says Shemesh. “They’re excited. We have all the sports science and recovery elements they could want.”

The main facility, designed by Gensler architects, includes separate locker rooms for the first and second teams; a hydrotherapy area that includes a lap/rehab pool, hot and cold plunge pools, and a sauna; and a 5,000-square-foot gym with a two-story high ceiling

and a wall of windows that let in natural light and overlook the eight full-size

pitches, five of which are heated.

There’s also a separate training room with rehab and treatment equipment, a large cafeteria, and a kitchen with a demo area where staff chefs can teach players how to cook healthy meals for themselves when they’re away from the facility. The kit room is the size of a three-car garage with rolling stacks of shelves; there’s even an area adjacent to the field-side exit for players to sit and put on their cleats.

“We’re proud of what’s been built, but even more, we know what it requires of us now,” said de Grandpré during the ribbon-cutting. “This center raises the standard. Now we must live up to it every day.”

A full squad of former Red Bulls players was on hand for the unveiling of the performance center. (Photo/Karen Fucito)

WHEN STARS ALIGN

As impressive as all that may be, it still doesn’t sound like a 10-year project. To sum up

Shemesh’s development saga: It’s north New Jersey. The territory comes with many rewards and complications, including scarce real estate,

labyrinthine regulation and approvals, and high costs.

“Originally, they wanted to be closer to New York City and SI Stadium,” Shemesh says. “But it’s hard to find a piece of land that big in that area.” The search for a spot large enough and flat enough slowly migrated west, eventually settling on land in Hanover owned by Bayer.

The team began developing plans. Around that time, two adjacent plots in Morris Township hit the market, one of them a former Honeywell campus. “It was two separate deals,” says Shemesh, but the second one took about 18 months longer than the first plot.

“It was a brownfield,” says Kristin Byrd, a design director at Gensler, the architecture firm. “That takes more time in terms of the civil engineering and the underground work... but it gave us the opportunity to remediate and clean that up for the community.”

Gensler does extensive work within sports, and Byrd said the design phase for this project took longer than most. “It’s just a testament to them wanting to be very thorough, to make sure that everybody was considered,” she says.

The process also reflected Red Bull’s status as a global soccer power, with company-wide input.

“Under their larger umbrella of teams, they have a lot of ownership stake throughout Europe, the U.S., and all over the world,” Byrd says, which came with specific thoughts about the building and how it was arranged. “The recovery modalities were influenced by a more European model. We got a lot into sports science and sports medicine. It’s nice to see an organization be so thoughtful about its players.”

Along the way, the team underwent leadership changes in both the executive suite and the coaching ranks, which prompted new ideas and design tweaks. Shemesh and other execs also visited other facilities, leading to further adjustments. “Everybody had a say. We got a lot of good ideas that led to changes, but all of those changes require approvals,” Shemesh says.

The team managed all obstacles, including testing to ensure that the four lit fields didn’t

create “light spill” into surrounding yards. “We want good relationships with our neighbors,” Shemesh says. “We’re setting the gold standard for a training center in the U.S. Every detail had to be right.”

That includes not just the impressive array of facilities and design elements inside, but also the exterior, which adds its own “wow” factor. Sleek and low-slung, it features black metal and glass with a white-roofed cross-section that rises like a cresting wave.

The peak of that wave houses the lobby, an open two-story space covered with windows,

bisected by a large auditorium-like staircase, where visiting youth program players and tournament participants can sit and listen to lectures or instructions.

“There’s a lot of natural light kind of filtering through, especially from the field side,” Byrd

says. “Every space has a clear view of that pitch, so psychologically, it’s really about reframing the focus and eliminating distraction.”

Soccer icon Jürgen Klopp, Red Bull Head of Global Football, said he is impressed by the commitment to the future of the game in the U.S. (Photo/Karen Fucito)

Distraction and focus are top of mind for Klopp, the former player who went on to become one of the greatest managers of all time. “From the most beautiful houses don’t always come the most ambitious kids,” the German legend said at the ribbon-cutting. “We have to make sure we use it properly.”

Klopp shared another thought that put the timing into perspective. “This is not about the role soccer played in the past in this country,” he said. “It’s about the role soccer will play in the future.”

Considering how long domestic soccer fans have been waiting for that, what’s another 10 years?