Galaxy Park holds ‘court’, literally!

Article posted by Coliseum, August 8^th, 2024

Image: Coliseum GSVA

Katie Pandolfo is all pepped up and perky. After all, she is at the wheel of the majestic venue – the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California (US) – which is all set to host five events of LA28 (the 2028 Summer Olympics to take place in the United States in July).

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She has been working with the multiuse sports complex for the last 20 years and feels “blessed to drive up the beautiful driveway to work every day”. She is also instrumental in putting to best use an underutilized space of the Dignity Health Sports Park which has got transformed into a seven-days-a-week activities-filled spot swarming with racquet sport and soccer buffs – the Galaxy Park.

In her present role at the Dignity Health Sports Park, Katie Pandolfo oversees event services and operations for the facility including development, programing, guest relations, financial management, community and Government relations, marketing and public relations, in addition to managing a staff comprising more than 900 full-and part-time employees.

In a brief chat with ‘Coliseum’, Katie Pandolfo, General Manager, Dignity Health Sports Park, US, narrates how they transformed eight “underutilized” tennis courts into what is now known as the Galaxy Park which sits inside the Dignity Health Sports Park. The transformed space opened in June 2023 and since it went on stream it is “humming with activities”.

Dignity Health Sports Park

The Dignity Health Sports Park is a multiuse sports complex located on the campus of the California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, California (US). The complex consists of the 27,000-seat Dignity Health Sports Park soccer stadium, the Dignity Health Sports Park tennis stadium, a track-and-field facility, and the VELO Sports Center velodrome. Its primary tenant is the Major League Soccer (MLS) team LA Galaxy.

Informed Katie Pandolfo, “We are a 125-acre campus and our 27,000-seat soccer stadium is the home of the LA Galaxy. We also have an 8,000-seat tennis stadium, 2,500-seat velodrome, 1,500-seat track and field stadium, 10 training fields, and 18 tennis courts.”

Galaxy Park

Narrating how the Galaxy Park was born, she said, “About a year and a half back we realized that out of the 18 tennis courts which the Dignity Health Sports Park boasts, eight of them were pretty underutilized and with any space one wants to reimagine how one can utilize that space to drive revenue and drive more eyeballs to the venue. Since we are primarily a soccer facility we decided to utilize the underutilized space to have more soccer programing, bring more people in, more fans, and more kids playing in all of our facilities. So, we decided to turn these eight courts into soccer and racquet sport facilities – short sided soccer, futsal. The entire space was reimagined and now it is called the Galaxy Park. The Galaxy Park includes five 5v5 soccer fields, two futsal courts, eight pickleball courts, and four padel courts.”

Challenges

Pandolfo put in that they faced challenges as well – “We had already committed the eight underutilized tennis courts space to hold tennis matches during LA28. We worked with a company called the Urban Soccer Park who has modular 5v5 soccer fields that they can place right on the tennis courts and then we can remove in 2028 for the Games tennis events to take place. So, that was key.”

Sum-up

She summed up by stating that to drive more people in “we transformed that underutilized eight tennis courts space into 5v5 soccer courts into two futsal, eight pickleball, four padel courts taking into consideration the popularity of these games in the United States and I am happy to say that the Galaxy Park is thronged by people since it opened. It has indeed been a great reuse of space.”

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