A training center for Triangle athletes is taking shape in Morrisville

On Tuesday, when developer Jeff Ammons showed off progress on his latest project, the Wake Competition Center, among the people on hand was Brian Tatum, assistant general manager of the Carolina Hurricanes.

Tatum has an interest in one of the many buildings that will make up the Wake Competition Center, a training ground for gymnasts and other athletes, including players of youth soccer, volleyball and hockey.

The Hurricanes are likely to practice at the two-rink hockey facility. “We’re just working through an agreement, hoping to get that finalized soon,” Tatum said. “We’re very excited.”

The Hurricanes practice now at Raleigh Center Ice, a repurposed building that had other uses before the Canes began practicing there in 2000. Tatum wasn’t sure, but he thought one of those uses was a nightclub.

Ammons said that scenario — elite athletes training in repurposed buildings — is one reason he is developing the Wake Competition Center on 30 acres between Aviation Parkway and Airport Boulevard in Morrisville. Whether they’re gymnasts, volleyball players or hockey players, a lot of Triangle athletes are training in buildings not designed originally for those sports, he said.

The Wake Competition Center will change that, Ammons said, with buildings designed specifically for volleyball, hockey and gymnastics. It will also have soccer fields and room for expansion.

Just one of those buildings is under construction now — the 45,000-square-foot volleyball training facility. But already, Ammons has signed tenants for all of the buildings and the soccer fields. They are the Triangle Volleyball Club; NCFC Youth Soccer, which will have majority scheduling control over the soccer fields; Superior Gymnastics; Athletic Lab, a sports performance and fitness training center now on NW Maynard Drive in Cary; and Raleigh Orthopedic Center, which will operate a clinic in the same building as Athletic Lab.

Tatum expects Hurricanes players will prefer the twin-rink building over Raleigh Center Ice. “We upfitted a locker room there” with maybe 6,000 square feet, he said. The locker room in the 110,000-square-foot building at the Wake Competition Center “would be quite a bit larger than that,” he said.

Ammons hopes to have the volleyball training center will open “as soon as we can this fall.” The other buildings and the soccer fields would follow in 2019, he said.

“We are working hard to get it done,” Ammons said.