Dec. 13–CANTON The man who oversaw the creation of the Walt Disney resort in Shanghai will oversee the creation of "the most inspiring place on earth."
Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village on Thursday announced that Mike Crawford, the former senior vice president and general manager of the Shanghai Disney Resort and president of Walt Disney Holding Company, Shanghai, has been hired as CEO of the Village.
David Baker, president and CEO of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, will remain the head of the nonprofit organization, which is a partner in the Village development.
"I am very excited that we have a tremendously talented and enormously experienced executive like Mike Crawford to quarterback the Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village team," Baker wrote in a statement. "He brings demonstrated leadership through his experience at the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Company, in addition to the development and operation of Disney Theme Parks, Hotels, and Retail, Dining and Entertainment Districts around the world.
"Mike Crawford will make Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village a world-class and state-of-the-art destination center."
Crawford is taking over a project that, in terms of bricks and mortar, has stagnated since the fall of 2017. Construction timelines given this past spring and summer have passed, and officials involved with the project have declined to comment on revised plans for construction.
The Village is described as a 10-part, nearly billion-dollar development designed to include the existing football museum, the Black College Football Hall of Fame, Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium, a youth sports complex, retail and restaurants, a virtual reality and indoor water park facility, a four-star hotel and conference center, a research and office building, a retirement community and medical facility, and an arena with convention space.
Who is Mike Crawford?
Crawford spent 24 years of his career working for The Walt Disney Co. As senior vice president and general manager of Shanghai Disney Resort, he negotiated the creation of the property, which includes an amusement park, two hotels and a shopping and entertainment center, and he developed the management company that operates it.
The resort cost $5.5 billion in U.S. dollars to build, according to news report from its 2016 opening, and attracted a million visitors during its six-week trial period.
In its first six months, the park drew 5.6 million people, ranking it in the top 25 amusement and theme parks worldwide for that year, data from the Themed Entertainment Association shows.
In 2014, Crawford left his position with Disney to become president of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Asia Pacific region. He later was named president of portfolio management and owner relations for the company, which has properties on nearly every continent. He was responsible for design and construction of all new hotels and resorts across the globe during that period.
Crawford is from Ohio and earned his undergraduate degree at Bowling Green State University before pursuing his executive MBA from the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.
Crawford joins a leadership team for the Village that includes former entertainment and NFL executives and that is overseen by Michael Klein, managing partner of New-York-based boutique advisory firm M. Klein and Co.
"Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village, the first-ever smart sports and entertainment city, is an extraordinary project and a unique opportunity," Crawford said in a statement. "It will incorporate the latest technology from Johnson Controls to create a world-class destination that will change people's lives. I look forward to helping advance this terrific vision into a reality."
Village conception
Demolition crews started tearing down houses near the Pro Football Hall of Fame two years ago to build the Village.
Blake Avenue NW — the road that separated the Hall and the modest nearby neighborhood — was cleared to make way for a four-star hotel and conference center. Construction was supposed to start before Thanksgiving 2016.
The landscape around the Hall has changed since then. More than 100 homes were purchased, many of which have been torn down. There's a $139 million stadium standing where Fawcett Stadium used to be. Don Scott Field now is part of a youth sports complex with four new multipurpose fields, which help attract tens of thousands of youth players and their families to Stark County every year.
But the other components of the envisioned Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Village remain only conceptual.
In August, a Hall vice president and a representative for the Village's new construction team attended a golf outing organized by the East Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents many of the labor unions that supplied workers to build Benson Stadium. They said foundation work for the hotel would start in the fall, and structure for the hotel would go up as soon as the earth and utility work was finished.
A few weeks before that — when hundreds of thousands of people were on their way to Canton for the annual enshrinement festival — Hall spokesman Pete Fierle said two youth fields would be completed by early fall, and construction of the east end zone of the stadium, the hotel, and the Center for Excellence office building all were expected to begin in the fall, too. The same construction time frame was given in April as the new leadership team for the Village project was introduced.
In 2017, developers filed documents with the city of Canton that showed most of the Village was scheduled to open in 2019. The east end zone of the stadium was supposed to be ready in 2018, as was the entire youth sports complex.
When the project was initially announced, in May 2015, every element of the development was slated to be finished by May 2018. Baker, and other Village officials, have cautioned about construction timelines in the past because of fluid developments.
The project hasn't been without a few difficulties. Construction stalled for months while at least 18 companies waited on millions of dollars in back pay from their work on Benson Stadium — an issue resolved with a loan developers secured this spring. Amid that setback, Klein was brought in to oversee the rest of the project.
The last groundbreaking at the campus was in April 2017.
Village construction
Developers stuck to one important timeline: Benson Stadium's north and south stands and west end zone were ready to go by enshrinement festival time in both 2016 and 2017, which gave crews roughly a 10-month construction window for each side of the stadium. The facility has cost nearly $139 million and largely has been privately funded, financial documents the Repository reviewed show.
The other noticeable change is the addition of four new multipurpose youth fields near Don Scott Field. In August, work was underway on the site, which has space for eight fields. The land in front of the nearby Smith Annex, which renderings show is where two more fields will be built, has been cleared.
The new builds on the campus gave the Village the opportunity to add some programming. This summer, Benson Stadium hosted its first concert that wasn't part of the enshrinement festival, and about 7,000 people came out to hear rapper Pitbull perform. This weekend, the second annual Pro Football Hall of Fame World Youth Football Championships will be held on the youth fields; the event last winter drew 70 teams from America and Mexico to Canton.
Then, there are the less-glamorous elements of the Village that also have seen progress: Developers have acquired at least 140 properties at a cost of at least $14 million, an analysis of Stark County Auditor's records shows. All the houses on the west side of Blake Avenue NW and the east side of Clearview Avenue between Woodward Place and 19th Street have been demolished. Streets were blocked for utility work this summer. And a temporary parking lot at Stadium Park was finished to accommodate visitors during construction.
MAP: See what developers own. Click on a marker to learn more about it.
–Yellow properties belong to developers, the National Football Museum, the Canton City School District or the city of Canton and can be used for building.
–Blue properties are properties developers have said they need but have not purchased.
–The black line is the footprint of the Village as submitted to and approved by Canton City Council
SOURCES Stark County Auditor's records, TIF and cooperative agreement documents, Village general development plan
What happens now?
It's still not clear when developers plan to start building something new.
There are a few looming deadlines set in agreements signed between government officials and developers, but none seems powerful enough to force the project to restart.
The planned Hall of Fame Hotel and attached parking garage project in 2017 was awarded $15 million in state loans, repayment of which is scheduled to begin in December 2020, according to documents from the state Controlling Board. The debt is supposed to be secured by revenue from a property tax break developers will get when they begin construction on a structure. If the hotel doesn't have a certificate of occupancy by Jan. 31, then the development company and Industrial Realty Group President and Chairman of the Board Stuart Lichter are on the hook for making payments, starting in June 2020.
A development agreement between the city of Canton and developers said the hotel had to finish within 2 1/2 years of construction beginning, and construction of the Center for Excellence — a medical and office building that will have the scoreboard for Benson Stadium built into the side — has to start by the middle of December.
An assistant law director for the city said the agreement provides the city with basic remedies in the event of a breach of contract by developers. The document shows if developers don't fulfill terms of the agreement, city officials must write a letter, and then developers get another 60 days to fix the issue before city officials may seek legal action.
The Village also is expected to host some major events in upcoming years: The NCAA Division III men's volleyball championships are scheduled to be held at the to-be-constructed performance center in 2022. And in 2020, Canton is supposed to host the NFL's Centennial Celebration. Plans for specific events and locations haven't been shared publicly.
Reach Alison at 330-580-8312 or [email protected].
On Twitter: @amatasREP
