Construction on the new facility began earlier this year and was scheduled to be completed in early 2022.

Lily Kashou, daughter of Bahij Kashou, owner of the sports complex, said the family has no comment on the incident until it receives more information.

Staley said the collapse caused no injuries.

“I got a notification about the collapse just after 5 p.m. (Sunday),” Staley said. “The project was, from what I was told, 75 percent completed. It was supposed to be opening in January (or) February. So that’s really a big loss for the kids in the community. They were really expecting to be able to use it.”

Staley said the sports complex, used for several indoor sporting events, has not been open since the collapse last winter, although the outdoor fields were being used. The facility centered around a dome billed as the largest air-supported dome structure in the United States, until its collapse.

The new facility being built was a 100,000 square foot steel metal structure, about 25,000 square feet smaller than the air-supported dome.

“My own daughter used to play soccer in that dome,” Staley said. ”There was always something weird about it. There was a suction noise and it used to make me nervous. I used to hate sitting in there watching my daughter’s soccer team. It always made me nervous.”

After the December collapse, Bahij Kashou transferred the sports leagues and tournaments to the Edge Sports Complex in Vestal, and got to work on rebuilding his Airport Road facility in the Town of Union.

On April 21, Broome County’s industrial development agency approved Kashou’s plan to rebuild the facility, which he says hosted 15,000 people a week prior to the 2020 collapse.

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