Take a 3-D tour of Real Salt Lake’s massive new training facility

Herriman • “What are we going to do with all this land?” Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen asked Vice President of stadium operations Craig Martin.

Martin had just proposed expanding the already roughly 30-acre plot that they had acquired for the future Zions Bank Real Academy in Herriman. It took only moment, Martin said, for Hansen to come up with an answer to his own question.

Martin fondly recounted that story at the ZBRA’s grand opening last week. The final product sat on 42 acres and included a STEM charter high school, Academy player dormitories, indoor training facilities, five full-sized grass fields and a stadium for RSL’s USL affiliate, the Real Monarchs.

While the dorms and the stadium are home to the Academy players and Monarchs, respectively, the grass fields and Zions Bank Training Facility were built for all four teams (counting the two Academy squads separately). Utah Royals FC, the National Women’s Soccer League affiliate, has used the indoor facility for the beginning of preseason, but the team plans to make America First Field in Sandy its home training base come regular season.

The indoor facility was built with over 90,000 square feet of masonry, walls, and veneer. Its large windows total 23,000 square feet of exterior glass. With the indoor fields housed in a modern warehouse-like structure, 62,000 square feet of metal siding was needed to complete it. Solar panels stretch across the roof of the main building to provide the facilities with renewable energy, and a Piet Mondrian-inspired painting— Hansen’s idea — livens up the exterior.

Even more exciting, however, are the many rooms that line the two turf soccer fields inside the building. Below, learn more about the facilities that make up the ZBRA. Click a label on the blueprint to go to that room. Panoramic views will play automatically, while 3-D videos allow the viewer to click and drag, or use the controls at the top left corner of the video, to explore the room.

The two artificial turf fields cover a total of 210,000 square feet. The indoor training center can seat 750 people. A large video screen is at the end of one field, and a scoreboard is at one end of the other. Both weight rooms are accessible directly from the fields.

The charter school opened in August and is part of the Jordan School District. With a focus on science, technology, engineering and math, the high school enrolls members of the two RSL Academy teams as well as students who don’t play soccer.

The cafeteria seats more than 200 people. Before and after training sessions, players are served meals from the facility’s two full-size kitchens. RSL also plans to serve concessions at indoor events.

The Real Monarchs and Real Salt Lake have almost identical locker rooms in the Zions Bank Training Center, complete with brand-new lockers, showers, TV screens and more. When these photos were taken, a week before the ribbon-cutting ceremony, name plaques and other cosmetic touches had yet to be installed.

The training room, with windows that look out onto the weight room, is full of treatment tables and hot and cold tubs. Its up-to-date technology includes electric muscle stimulation machines, NormaTec recovery systems and an egg-shaped pod that is used to calculate a person’s muscle and fat proportions.

Complete with treadmills, stationary bikes, barbells, and other fitness machines, the weight room is where the first team and the Monarchs build strength and conditioning in addition to — or right before or after — training. The weight room is directly accessible from the field and training room, and it’s just a few steps down the hall from both locker rooms.

The Real Monarchs and Real Salt Lake have almost identical locker rooms in the Zions Bank Training Center, complete with brand-new lockers, showers, TV screens and more. When these photos were taken, a week before the ribbon-cutting ceremony, name plaques and other cosmetic touches had yet to be installed.

This room houses large hot and cold tubs, but the star of the show is the underwater treadmill. It’s a tool to help athletes come back from injury and gives them a way to jog or run with minimal stress to the joints. The hot and cold tubs (situated in the raised platform) are used to treat and prevent muscle soreness. The wet room was still under construction when the photo below was taken the week before the ZBRA grand opening.

The Academy has its own training room. Though it is smaller than the main training room around the corner, it is equipped with many of the same therapy machines. Check out the larger training room for more details.

The Academy has its own weight room, separate from RSL and the Monarchs’ larger facility. It is stocked with free weights, medicine balls, ropes, barbells and lifting machines. It is directly accessible from the indoor fields and the Academy training room.

The RSL and Monarchs lounges are almost identical. Set up like living rooms, they provide areas for the players sit and watch TV, play foosball, or just hang out.