| Joe Banner, Eagles Executive VP/Chief Operating Officer On what the NovaCare Complex means to the Eagles' organization:""The biggest thing it means to the Eagles, in a macro sense, is that we have used the building to help define ourselves as a first class organization that appreciates the importance of having great people work for us. We also understand the value of putting those great people in a superior work environment, and specifically, with regard to our football players."" "Where the players are concerned, we have attempted to provide them with the very best across the board in terms of the comfort of the locker room and the adjacent players' lounge, with regard to the state-of-the-art quality of the equipment in both the weight room and the training room. It's making a major investment in the Hydroworks therapy area and providing our players with the utmost advanced and comfortable equipment and facilities in the league."" ""And in particular, with regard to the quality of additional health care and rehabilitative service we can provide our players, the relationship and proximity of the training room to the NovaCare wing [the NovaCare Rehabilitation Center for Excellence], attached as it is directly to the training room, is unparalleled. Not only will we will have additional therapists readily available but, we literally will have an MRI machine located just steps from the training room."" ""We are committed to these players in terms of their health and in terms of providing them with the opportunity to maximize their ability on the field. The existence of this building, the quality and scope of this facility, on a macro level, is kind of a statement about what this organization is and what it believes in." "On a more micro level the statement we're making says that every individual's attitude and ability to be productive is enhanced by the quality of the space and by the investment that has been made in even the little details of each and every space." On the athletic wing of the building, which houses the locker room, players' lounge, training room and weight room: ""The football wing will maximize the comfort and efficiency of players who are working out and rehabbing injuries. Whether they're here as part of the off-season program simply working on improving the level of their play, or whether they're here rehabilitating from surgery. Or if it's during the season and they're simply trying to bounce back from the bruises that come on any given Sunday in an effort to be ready for the following week."" ""We've even installed three times as many showers … and they're actually high enough for today's players to stand under. I realize this sounds simplistic or minute. But this was something the players wanted. For them, the very fact that there would be enough showers – with high enough shower heads – was the equivalent of what windows now are to the administrative staff. We had no windows at the Vet; now we have an abundance of windowed offices as well as open, well-lit space. These are things that you would think would be so basic but in our case, coming from where we were located to where we are now, that in fact is kind of a major breakthrough."" ""We have created what we feel is the most comfortable off-season workout environment in a manner that should help the players who are here spend time together, work together, have lunch together, watch TV in the player lounge together, get to know each other. Believe it or not, when the season gets going and the day-to-day schedule is filled with position meetings, walk-throughs, practices, if you're a defensive back and another guy is an offensive lineman, you know the other guy but you don't really get to know them. Now we have an environment and a space where everyone can be much more integrated."" On how the NovaCare Complex - as a corporate headquarters and training facility – can ultimately enhance chemistry on both the players' level and on the administrative side as well: ""When we first sat down with the architects at Michael Graves, they said to us, 'Aside from telling us how many offices you need, what your goals are for the building?"" ""A primary one was to create an environment in which people would come together, spend time together. That's what drove the design of the auditorium and the location of the cafeteria, which is right in the middle of the building. I mean, who puts a cafeteria in the middle of a building? Well, we wanted to create a space where people would come together and see each other, meet each other, talk with each other. There truly was an underlying philosophy of finding more ways to bring people together, have them spend time together and get to know each other better in natural ways."" ""That philosophy drove some of the decisions with regard to the areas in which we made a big investment. We invested more in our auditorium, for example, than any other training facility in the country by a huge margin. Part of the thinking there was this is a big space where we can bring everybody together, so let's make it a special space, let's put it in a prime location right off the lobby. And that's just what we did." On the decision to create an ""athletic wing "" of the building: ""It was two things. One, we wanted the players to have a certain degree of privacy yet, not a sense of separation; and that's a very important distinction."" ""The other thing was space. If we wanted to create a dramatic weight room with a two-tiered space then we needed to put the weight room in an area such as it is now."" ""That was part of the challenge, to create something where the players are integrated and we're one as an organization, but at the same time give them their space and allow them to perform the off-season and in-season bonding that is so important." On how the move to the NovaCare Complex helps uplift the Eagles ' image throughout the NFL:""It moves us forward in the league on a lot of fronts."" ""I mean, if you walk into a couple of law firms, your perception of Firm X vs. Firm Y firm starts to evolve from the sense that you have of the space."" ""So, we have enhanced our image in a dramatic way, especially – on a very basic level - when you compare it to where we are coming from which was essentially the worst day-to-day working facility in the league."" ""But then also, we are making a statement about what we want this organization to be. "" ""There is free agency for players. The players have choices; the employees have choices, too. You've got other teams in the NFL, the Arena Football League, the XFL, and sports leagues at minor league levels that are expanding into much more major businesses. We are competing at every level for the best possible people. Nowhere moreso than in the area of coaches and players and scouting … but on all fronts of the organization you are competing."" ""This building reflects a huge investment in our desire to succeed. We are sending a huge message about how determined we are to succeed."" ""Remember how, for years, people talked about how well the 49ers treated their people. This is a $30-plus million investment that, unto itself, makes a dramatic statement about how we feel about the value of our players, our coaches, our employees and about how environment can make a contribution toward them being the very best that they can be. And in some instances our ability to get players to come here who might not otherwise have come here." On whether the facility can be a deciding factor for a free agent player: ""Each player has different things he cares about. So what you really want to do is have as few obstacles and as many positives as possible in an effort to encourage them to choose your team. With our move from the Vet to the NovaCare Complex, we have shed ourselves of a series of huge negatives, some as simple as being in terms of image, some in terms of things as specific as the tiny, dingy, unattractive weight room."" ""Take that weight room for example. We've replaced it with the biggest positive relative to a day-to-day working facility that there is in the whole league. We now have 8,000 square feet of space and unparalleled equipment, both of which, in reality, make for a complete, positive change of atmosphere and perception."" ""Remember, we were able to attract Ricky Watters, Troy Vincent, and Jon Runyan to Philadelphia when we were in the old facility. And there are going to be free agents whose only interest is in how much money they are going to get paid, or who their coach will be, or what your offensive or defensive scheme is. Whether or not you have a first-class facility may or may not be of importance to them."" ""But there are other players, and we have seen some over the last few years, who we specifically lost because we couldn't provide them with a comfortable working environment."" ""Now, no longer will we see the working environment be such a negative factor. We will no longer see the pool of players we might be able to attract actually shrink before free agency even opens."" ""We are confident that players who walk in here, players who have been at Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona and St. Louis, some of the other clubs with nice, new facilities, will look around and say, ""Wow, I thought what I had in Tennessee was nice but this is even better."" On how those in the organization see the club now that so many of the goals Jeffrey Lurie mapped out when he bought the club 1994 have become reality (through the acquisition of top-flight coaching and player personnel staffs, the acquisition of a franchise quarterback, the opening of a state-of-the-art training facility, and with groundbreaking for a world class stadium on the horizon): ""Here's the good news and the bad."" ""People do feel good about how far we have come and the things that we have achieved."" "But the reality is that all these things are just the building blocks that are needed to achieve the ultimate goal, and that is championships. So, we are still very far from anybody having a sense of real satisfaction."" ""I think we're feeling like we have started to put the key things in place in order to be able to achieve the ultimate goal. So, there is some optimism from the sense of progress that has been made."" ""But because these things we're doing now are really just the foundation for a much bigger, much more important goal, the level of satisfaction at the moment is fairly moderate. Now, when the foundation steps – the hiring of quality coaching and player personnel staffs, the building of the NovaCare Complex and the new stadium - translate to winning a Super Bowl, then the satisfaction of winning the Super Bowl and achieving all those steps along the way will be tremendous." |
