A behind-the-scenes look at how Hawks got new practice facility

August 2015: Hawks CEO Steve Koonin and Emory Director of the Emory Orthopaedics and Spine Center meet for an introductory dinner.

September 2015: A group from the Hawks and Emory make a 24-hour tour of practice facilities in Chicago, Minneapolis and Cleveland.

February 2, 2016: The Hawks and Emory reach an agreement to partner and build a facility in Brookhaven.

April 5, 2016: The official announcement is made on the agreement.

June 24, 2016: Ground will be broken on the new facility.

It started with a dinner.

Famed Atlanta steakhouse Bone’s was the location for a simple social introduction by a mutual friend of Steve Koonin and Dr. Scott Boden. The meeting between the Hawks CEO and the director of the Emory Orthopaedics and Spine Center last August led to a partnership that will result in a state-of-the-art practice facility and sports medicine center that will open in October 2017.

Rarely do deals like this come together so fast. The NBA Board of Governors approved the sale of the Hawks to an ownership group led by Tony Ressler on June 24, 2015. On Friday, exactly one year later, the Hawks and Emory will break ground on a $50 million complex in Brookhaven. Here is a behind-the-scenes story on how a unique partnership led to a facility unprecedented in the NBA in less than a year.

“When Tony Ressler took over the team, one of the first things he outlined was that we have to improve the practice facility,” Koonin said. “He challenged us to create a plan. He gave us a timeline that was very quick. Tony doesn’t have a tremendous amount of patience for inefficiency.”

The Hawks sought to partner with a medical provider or a municipality. College Park made a “brilliant” presentation, according to Koonin, early in the process. However, it was soon decided that teaming with a medical provider would be the best option, a growing trend around the NBA.

The list was pared to two and negotiations began on parallel paths. Emory had several properties and was looking to purchase the 60-acre Executive Park nearby in Brookhaven. Wellstar Health System had prime property in Kennesaw.

A month after that dinner, a group from the Hawks and Emory went on a national fact-finding mission at the suggestion of Boden, touring practice facilities in Chicago, Minneapolis and Cleveland, all of them affiliated with medical providers.

The group visited all three sites in a 24-hour span. Boden led a group from Emory and the Hawks contingent consisted of Koonin, team vice chairman Grant Hill, president and coach Mike Budenholzer, general manager Wes Wilcox and training staff members Keke Lyles and Art Horne.

“That’s when the light bulb went off in my mind about the opportunity to make it something much more than two basketball courts with somebody’s name on the building,” Boden said.

If Emory could acquire the Executive Park location, then the school’s entire sports medicine department could be expanded and relocated to a new facility so near the university. It would give athletes of all levels a dedicated space with doctors and state-of-the-art equipment. The Hawks would get a location near where its players, coaches and management staff live and could start from scratch on a new practice facility.

The Hawks’ decision to go forward with Emory was reached in February and it took less than 10 days to go from term sheets to signed agreements. Budenholzer was told of the final decision as the team boarded a flight to Philadelphia for a regular-season game.

The building will be 90,000 square feet, with Emory’s sports medicine division will occupying 30,000 square feet and the Hawks taking up the other 60,000.

From his end, Boden had to secure sponsorship dollars, get approval to expand the sports medicine division, acquire the land and make legal arrangements between the school and the Hawks. He also made several trips to Santa Barbara, Calif., to recruit P3, one of the nation’s top sports performance facilities, to open a second location.

Through it all, it had to be accomplished in secrecy, to protect Emory’s real estate negotiations and the Hawks’ involvement. The school’s board of trustees was only brought in when high-level approval was required.

“That’s when I got the idea this could be something really special in terms of integrating and having it be a destination, not only for the Hawks but for professional athletes in all sports,” Boden said. “Top-notch sports medicine, we would be able to co-locate a very high level medical and diagnostic equipment at a practice facility that normally you couldn’t justify for just 12 basketball players. But because you have an entire sports medicine division, now you can take the best and most expensive MRI scanner and all the key research and performance enhancement equipment there.

“It becomes available not only for the professional athletes but for the rest of the elite athletes and high school athletes and weekend warriors because it’s the main sports medicine center for our program, which covers the whole city. The critical mass enables us to deliver something to the Hawks that was really unprecedented.”

Before a formal agreement was reached, the Hawks hired David Painter as director of basketball facilities. He worked for the Cavaliers and guided that organization through the construction and opening of its practice facility.

The Hawks, who hired architecture firm HOK to design the building, are still working with each aspect of the organization, including equipment, video, scouting and training, to design the optimal space and equipment. The entire basketball operations department will be re-located to the facility, allowing more room for planned renovations to Philips Arena.

The training facility and weight room will be at the hub of the Hawks’ new space.

In addition to the Hawks’ own entrance, locker room and training facilities, the building will have a separate entrance and locker room for other NBA players desiring to work out in the offseason. It will also feature an outdoor pool and 65-yard turf field for training. There will be a private elevator that will enable an injured player to be in an examination room with Emory doctors in less than a minute, according to Koonin.

“We want to keep sacred our players and what is special to them but we also want to be a place that NBA players who love Atlanta or are looking to spend a summer can have a workout in a secure building that has some of the preeminent facilities,” he said.

At the end of the complicated process, Emory purchased the property and the Hawks signed a ground lease for five of the 60 acres. The Hawks will build the building and Emory signed a tenant lease. Emory also signed a sponsorship agreement.

The name of the facility will be revealed at the ground breaking ceremony on Friday.

“This is a true partnership in a sense that we are each bringing something pretty critical to the table that makes the sum of the parts even better,” said Thad Sheely, Hawks’ chief financial officer and executive vice president for real estate who joined the organization in December and worked on the deal. “There is a real confluence of factors that lined up fairly unusually that allowed this to happen.”