Oshkosh is in the running to host the Milwaukee Bucks D-League team thanks to the efforts of Greg Pierce, a local businessman who leads the Oshkosh pitch.
Editor’s Note: The following is a piece of original reporting by co-site expert Ti Windisch on Oshkosh’s pursuit of the Milwaukee Bucks’ D-League franchise. Ti also attends UW-Oshkosh as a student, and is the managing editor at the University’s Advance-Titan newspaper. This piece should not be read as an endorsement or preference made on the behalf of Behind the Buck Pass as a site, but more of a look inside the process and bid of one of the leading contenders. As a site, our only wish is to see a D-League team founded within the state of Wisconsin in the very near future. – Adam McGee
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An inquiry from Greg Pierce, based on pure intuition, could lead to the Milwaukee Bucks NBA Development League team being housed in a new arena in Oshkosh for the foreseeable future.
Pierce, President and CEO of Windward Wealth Strategies and the founder of the Fox Valley Professional Basketball group, said his group reached out to the Bucks before the franchise had ever publicly indicated they were searching for a D-League home in Wisconsin.
“We got a hold of people we knew within the organization and began a conversation with them,” Pierce said. “We ended up being right, they were thinking about and discussing what to do about the D-League situation, and we got invited to the big dance.”
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The Bucks have selected Oshkosh as one of three finalists to host their D-League team thanks to the efforts of Pierce, and the excitement in the community to bring professional basketball back for the first time since 1987.
Oshkosh City Manager Mark Rohloff said that from the jump, Pierce was the one leading the way in the quest for the D-League team.
“This has always been an effort led by Mr. Pierce and his investor group,” Rohloff said. “As a whole, we have followed his lead, providing information and advice where we thought it was appropriate.”
Pierce said the conversation with the Bucks began over a year ago, and thanks to Oshkosh looking to redevelop some property the fit was ideal.
“You add two and two together and we end up with a perfect storm of a basketball team needing to look at a new team close to home and a city with an appetite for redevelopment that needed some ideas on what to do,” Pierce said. “And so we pursued that.”
A professional basketball team needs somewhere to play. As the Milwaukee Bucks learned in the summer of 2015, funding an arena can be a complicated process.
Pierce said that all along the plan was to privately finance the arena, to expedite the building process and avoid the hassle of attempting to use public money on the project.
“We have a number of clients and people that are interested in investing in that deal, and that’s what we’d do,” Pierce said. “We’d build a building that would cost $14 million to build, and the primary tenant would be the D-League team.”
Pierce said the response to a website being launched asking for season ticket commitments was very positive, although it was not just fans looking to get involved with the team.
“We got 1,100 season ticket commitments already,” Pierce said. “We asked for people to consider to be sponsors, we had 75 businesses reach out to us this summer that said they were interested in being sponsors of the team.”
Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce President/CEO John Casper said the number of commitments to buy season tickets was an impressive part of Oshkosh’s pitch.
“It was overwhelming,” Casper said. “Other D-League teams that are already playing don’t have the level of interest with season tickets that came out initially from that first round.”
Pierce said Oshkosh was not automatically the choice for the host city of his group’s pitch, but the reaction found in the city made it an easy choice.
“We did look at other locations, Pierce said. “We did not have to select Oshkosh. We could’ve gone anywhere for this. We selected here because of the response we were getting when we brought the idea up. The same response wasn’t being gotten in other communities in this area.”
Pierce said the facility will provide uses aside from just housing the D-League team, although it isn’t worth constructing without the stable tenant the team would provide.
According to Pierce, the focus will be on creating the best basketball experience possible for the cost of the arena.
“Our plans are it would be one of the premier facilities built exclusively for the D-League,” Pierce said. “It may not cost much, but on the inside it would be one of the nicest facilities for the players in the league. Our plan is to put some serious money into amenities that would make the players comfortable and happy.”
“On the inside it would be one of the nicest facilities for the players in the league”
-Greg Pierce
Pierce said the arena would hold around 3,500 fans. He cited another D-League team, the Iowa Energy, as an example of why the facility wouldn’t hold tens of thousands of people. Although the Energy get good attendance numbers, since they play in a building that holds nearly 17,000 people the games have a different atmosphere.
“That looks like failure,” Pierce said. “It’s a great crowd, but in a big building it’s kind of lost, there’s no atmosphere, it’s kind of dead. We would rather be in a smaller building where we can create a demand for tickets, there’s excitement and noise.”
Pierce said the arena would have other uses besides hosting the D-League team, including bringing more entertainment acts to Oshkosh.
“Basketball provides this building, which can bring first-rate concerts, comedians, other kinds of shows, trade shows, events that are missing this market at this point,” Pierce said. “We don’t have a facility for that. This building would bring that, and I think dramatically increase the kind of entertainment options that are available.”
Casper said part of the pitch hinged on strong community support for the potential Oshkosh D-League team.
“The reach out at that time was asking people to try to quantify that through commitments, and the commitments were unofficial, but through commitments to buy season tickets and that kind of stuff,” Casper said.
Casper said Pierce reached out to the community to gauge the potential support for the D-League team.
“Greg reached out to the community,” Casper said. “He used a number of organizations, the Chamber included, and asked us to reach out for membership. Part of his pitch was to quantify support.”
Oshkosh was not alone. Several cities, including Sheboygan, Racine, Grand Chute and La Crosse, also vied to host the D-League team, although La Crosse and Grand Chute have since been ruled out.
According to Pierce, he was confident all along Oshkosh would have a great shot against the competition.
“We by far were better organized, financed and better researched,” Pierce said. “We knew what the league was looking for, what the Bucks were looking for, we understood the lay of the land. We had that figured out going into a proposal and felt that we were going to be very strong contenders.”
Rohloff said he was impressed with how the group put together their pitch to bring the D-League team to Oshkosh.
“They had identified the Bucks’ needs, and the NBA’s desire for a D-League team for the Bucks, and developed plans to make it as turnkey an operation for the Bucks as they could,” Rohloff said. “I believe that their flexibility in the facility and its potential location was also an advantage.”
La Crosse Center Director Art Fahey said he believed La Crosse had a good shot based on the city’s history with professional basketball, although he did not have knowledge of the other cities’ pitches.
“I think the Bucks are looking for something very specific,” Fahey said. “I think they’ve got some guidelines from the NBA on what a D-League has to entail. I think it’s exciting for whatever market gets it.”
Pierce said he believed the D-League team could receive a significant boost in attendance from being located near UW Oshkosh.
“UWO is the third-largest public university in the state besides Milwaukee and Madison,” Pierce said. “I think that’s a huge positive. And the fact that we’d be playing during school time ”
Pierce said there could be opportunities for certain majors attending classes at UWO to have internships with the Bucks D-League team.
“Imagine if we have the team here, and the number of people that go to school there that can get internships with the team that want to do sports for a living, or want to do sports medicine,” Pierce said.
UWO Chancellor Andrew Leavitt said he believes having the D-League team near UWO would be very beneficial to the University.
“The D-League team from the Milwaukee Bucks presents a wonderful opportunity to provide a living laboratory for any number of academic disciplines we have on campus,” Leavitt said. “I very much support it.”
According to Pierce, the Greater Oshkosh Economic Development Corporation and the City of Oshkosh were very supportive of his pitch.
“As we went into the bid process, we had broad community support to show the Bucks that this was no fluke, that this town wanted this team here,” Pierce said.
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Rohloff said although he is surprised the Bucks are taking so long to announce their decision, he’s confident the city will be ready to build the arena, should Oshkosh be chosen.
“Despite the delays, we are working towards getting things done at the local level so that if Oshkosh is awarded the team, we are prepared to help them meet their time frame to start in the 2017-18 season, if that is what they want,” Rohloff said. “We will still have many hurdles to overcome, but we have thought out various scenarios to make sure that we are prepared to be responsive to the investors group if Oshkosh is chosen.”
Pierce said even with the delay in the Bucks announcing their decision he believes the arena could be ready for the next D-League season, which would be in November 2017.
“We can be ready,” Pierce said. “It’ll be close, but the way we’ve positioned the building and how we’re going to build it, we can get it up in time. It’ll be really close, but yes.”
When asked for comment, the Milwaukee Bucks stated the franchise was not ready to announce their pick for the host city.
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“We’re continuing to work towards establishing a D-League team here in Wisconsin,” the team said. “At this time, we’re not in a position to make any announcements regarding the team.”