Target prepares to open as Firestone mulls Central Park future

FIRESTONE — While Firestone is definitely getting a Target — the big-box retailer is expected to open a location in the City Centre development July 26 — the Carbon Valley community is not likely to welcome a professional sports franchise anytime soon.

As the 128,000-square-foot Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) store just west of Home Depot prepares its summertime debut, Firestone residents and leaders have gone back to the drawing board to rethink the future of Central Park, which had been envisioned as the future home of a United Soccer League stadium. 

Central Park is a 252-acre, town-owned property on Colorado Boulevard that surrounds the Carbon Valley Regional Library and Firestone’s municipal campus. The town has long sought to develop the site into a mixed-use district with a hotel, residences, entertainment and recreational facilities, and retailers.

United Soccer League went public last fall with its intent to establish new men’s and women’s pro teams in town, bringing Indianapolis-based sports facilities-developer Card & Associates onboard to help plan a Central Park stadium and athletics fieldhouse.

Card and USL’s plan for Firestone, which was unveiled in September, called for a “200,000-square-foot multi-sports facility for all ages,” along with a “stadium with a minimum seating capacity of 5,000,” and “complementary development, including, but not limited to, infrastructure improvements, hospitality, retail and other commercial developments,” according to the now-mothballed predevelopment agreement with the town that spelled out the broad strokes for the parties’ vision at Central Park.

The league and the developer may have overestimated the local appetite for such a project. In months that followed the unveiling of preliminary plans, the stadium proposal failed to generate much support from the broader Firestone community. 

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“I know that there’s not an appetite to have USL here, but they have been good to work with,” Trustee Lorna Morton said during a February meeting in which the board opted to terminate a predevelopment agreement it had inked last year with the league and Indianapolis-based sports facilities-developer Card & Associates. “And at some point in the future — I’m not saying when, and if this would become something that Firestone would want to consider — I think they’d be willing to have discussions. I think we’re leaving on good terms.”

While pro sports are out at Central Park, Firestone officials still appear inclined to create a hub for amateur athletics at the site. After cancelling the pre-development agreement with Card and the USL, which is often viewed as a rival to more-established, top-tier leagues such as the NWSL and Major League Soccer, in February — a move that could leave the town on the hook for reimbursing some of the costs incurred during the preliminary planning process — the board of trustees met with Card in the spring to discuss the possibility of moving ahead with only the fieldhouse portion of the previously envisioned project.

“The community is primed for something to happen” on the Central Park site, Card executive vice president of real estate and development Dan Connors said in March.

Specifics about what a fieldhouse could look like or what it could feature in terms of number and types of playing fields and courts remain undetermined, in part because Firestone and Card are no longer partners on a predevelopment agreement.

Firestone officials and staff said in the spring that they plan to continue soliciting feedback on what the community wants from a Central Park development project and could re-engage with Card later this year for a new predevelopment agreement without the USL.

While Firestone officials failed to lure professional sports to town, they succeeded in nabbing Target, which expects to hire about 200 workers to staff the store at 4358 City Centre Road. The Minnesota-based retail giant bought bought the 11 acres of vacant land where the Target store is nearly finished being built for nearly $4 million in April 2025.

Under an incentives deal approved by the Firestone Town Board in late 2024, the town agreed to reimburse the company $2.5 million for land-acquisition costs, as well as grant Target $2.8 million worth of water credits. The store, which will be led by store director Shawn Stratton, is expected to generate not only building and property taxes but also an estimated $1.5 million in annual sales tax revenue once it opens in 2026.

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