Gotham Football Club training facility in New Jersey
August 15, 2024
Design: SHoP Architects
Location: New Jersey, USA
Renders by SHoP Architects
SHoP Architects has been appointed by Gotham Football Club (FC) to design a new training facility for its championship-winning top-tier professional women’s soccer team based in Whippany, New Jersey. The project will transform the former facility of Major League Soccer club the New York Red Bulls into a purpose-built environment centered on elite performance, recovery and athlete well-being, making it one of the first sites to meet National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) requirements. The collaboration with SHoP reflects Gotham FC’s long-term commitment to creating a best-in-class experience for players, coaches and staff and underscores the team’s commitment to advancing women’s professional soccer in the United States. Renovations will begin late this summer, with full project completion targeted for summer 2027.
“Gotham FC is being built with the ambition to become one of the defining clubs in women’s soccer and a global brand in sport,” said Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Governor of Gotham FC. “Transforming this site into our first dedicated training facility is a critical part of that vision, giving our players and staff a true home base designed around performance, recovery, development and connection. As the game continues to grow globally, investments like this reinforce the standard we are setting across the club and help us compete for championships, attract world-class talent and build something that lasts.”
Guided by principles of athlete-centered design, durability and campus cohesion, SHoP will transform existing buildings and infrastructure into an integrated, state-of-the-art training environment tailored to the demands of elite performance for the Gotham Team. Every programmatic and design decision directly supports player performance, preparation and staff efficiency, from recovery and wellness spaces to thenew locker room, dining hall, meeting rooms and offices. Drawing on SHoP’s expertise across three decades as a generalist practice immersed in a profusion of building types, social spaces are leveraged to become dynamic connections between the existing buildings and critical sites that reinforce Gotham’s team culture. One such site is the Gotham Quad, a place for the Gotham community to relax, celebrate, reflect and grow. The use of wood in this space and throughout the new construction brings a feeling of warmth and connection to nature as it hints at a domestic scale—a first, true home for the team.
“Our goal is to create a practice facility that reflects Gotham FC’s identity and ambition through a design that is elite yet grounded. Through sustainable adaptive reuse and warm, timber-intensive new interventions like the Gotham Quad, we’re going to deliver a new model for a state-of-the-art training campus,” said SHoP Principal Dana Getman. “It’s a facility designed to support world-class athletes on the pitch while fostering deep team chemistry and community connection. As a professional women’s soccer fan for over four decades, and now as a parent who gets to watch this league thrive year-round with my daughter, being part of the ecosystem building Gotham’s future home is an honor.”
In addition to the three outdoor fields, a new pre-engineered metal building will house a full-size synthetic turf pitch, enabling year-round training on-site. By eliminating seasonal relocations and improving scheduling flexibility, the indoor field will support consistent player development while maximizing existing campus resources and strengthening the identity and cohesion of the team.
The partnership between Gotham FC and SHoP reflects a shared belief in building ambitious, practical and novel solutions rooted in place and community. By adapting and expanding the existing campus, the new training facility creates immediate value while establishing a flexible framework for future growth—an approach aligned with Gotham FC’s ethos: “Always Building, Never Finished.”
About GOTHAM FC
Representing New Jersey and New York with top global talent, Gotham FC is one of 16 clubs in the NWSL. The club won its first NWSL championship in 2023 and captured the first continental club trophy in North American women’s soccer by winning the inaugural 2024-25 CONCACAF W Champions Cup, earning qualification for the first editions of the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup and the FIFA Women’s Club World Cup. Gotham went on to secure its second NWSL championship in 2025, becoming the lowest seed in league history to win the title.
Rebranded as Gotham FC in 2021, the club plays its home matches at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, N.J. Originally founded in 2007 as Sky Blue FC, the team won the inaugural Women’s Professional Soccer Championship in 2009 and has been a founding member of the NWSL since the league’s launch in 2013.
About SHoP Architects
SHoP Architects – https://www.shoparc.com/ is a New York-based global design leader, with iconic projects completed or underway across more than 100 million square feet on five continents. We work with the world’s most important and innovative companies in a wide range of industries to create award-winning projects of international renown.
Our practice forefronts the activation of dynamic public spaces, the use of technology to imaginatively reinterpret authentic building materials and an emphasis on the research and deployment of adaptive methods that simplify and accelerate project delivery under challenging circumstances. Notable SHoP projects include Brooklyn’s Barclays Center arena, the Uber Headquarters in San Francisco, the Collins Arch complex in Melbourne, Fulbright University Vietnam, the Botswana Innovation Hub, multiple diplomatic facilities under a Design Excellence contract with the U.S. Department of State and two supertall residential towers in New York City—111 West 57th Street and The Brooklyn Tower. The diverse, trendsetting and enduring work of the firm has been widely celebrated with a variety of honors, among them the Smithsonian Institute’s National Design Award for Architecture and the 2025 AIA Medal of Honor.
In 2021, SHoP became a 100-percent employee-owned company—furthering a commitment to a culture of innovation and the next-generation practice of architecture.
Images by SHoP Architects
Gotham Football Club training facility, New Jersey images / information received 100626
Location: New Jersey, USA
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