11/13/2024
Thank you for everyone’s continued support through the past year while we navigated the extensive renovations and unfortunately the opening that never came at The PIT.
Ryan and I thought it was time to explain why that opening never came and why it most likely never will. Over the past year we have remained quiet and only shared our struggles with a handful of people. It saddens us both to write these words as our family and friends worked their fingers to the bone getting this facility ready to serve our community in big ways.
At the end of 2023, we entered into an agreement with the owners of the abandoned Shop Rite building in Moneta. A building that has sat deserted for over 10 years right here in our neighborhood serving no purpose. We developed what we thought was a strong relationship with the owners, meeting several times over several months going back and forth on our plans for their property. They were excited to join forces in having such a valuable resource in our community.
Our plan was a 10K square foot indoor sports facility serving all teams and youth in our area. A large waiting area for siblings to play and parents to watch with large bathrooms and space to accommodate resources such as tutoring. A place for everyone to come together to continue on the vision we have sought out for the past two years by serving our community and connecting with our youth through athletics.
At the beginning of 2024, we hit the ground running starting the behind the scenes work on a lease, permits and inspections through the county. During this time we met every single request the owners sent our way, jumping through many hoops to almost prove ourselves in hindsight.
Spring 2024 we were given keys to the building, insured the property, sent all deposits, signed the lease sending it back to the landlord and were given the go ahead to start on renovations. During this time the landlords remained friendly but extremely busy traveling out of the country and at times hard to reach. Their building manager would come by on occasion checking on the work being done and stayed in contact with us almost daily as we worked on every single inch of this massive 10K square foot facility.
During this time they would respond, many times delayed, but always sent signatures or answers as we needed them. One thing they never sent back to us though, was their signed portion of the lease we had returned to them. Holding onto it always coming up with a reason why they couldn’t email it back but we never thought too much of it as they cashed our checks and gave us the keys. We had dozens of people working around the clock on everything from electrical relocation, moving the buildings lighting up to a safe height for indoor sports, installing over 8K square feet of indoor turf, laying over 2K square feet of new flooring, replacing every single ceiling tile, painting almost every square inch of the building, renovating bathrooms, removing hundreds of pounds of old grocery store equipment, setting up brand new sports equipment and furniture, the list is truly endless. We stayed extremely busy, trusting everything was okay as we continued to invest in this facility.
After 3 long tireless months of around the clock hard work, we were within 30 days of opening to the public. The county came out for their inspection and it was then it was identified we would need a massive fire wall built before we could open. We immediately hired a structural engineer, had plans drawn for the project and purchased the supplies. This was an unexpected setback costing us over $10K but we pressed forward. In order to build the fire wall we of course needed the landlords permission. Never did we think, obeying safety standards set by the county would start such a frenzy but this is where everything took a turn.
In our attempt to receive their written permission, we quickly realized they no longer wanted to honor the lease they sent us or any agreement we had settled on over the previous 6 months.
Without getting into too many revealing details, the relationship quickly deteriorated. They denied us permission to finish the work required by the county to ensure we were up to legal code. Without their permission we were at a complete stand still. We halted the last month of work once we realized they were not going to grant us permission.
Fast forward a month to May 2024 (the month we were projected to open to the public) the landlords continued to give us the run around. They then at that point begin to call the police on us when we entered the facility to work saying their were unknown individuals breaking into their building, denied ever giving us access to the building, broke into the facility to look through our property and then went completely went silent at every attempt we made to reach out to them.
Needless to say we are now currently in a very extensive lawsuit with the owners of the building we renovated and transformed as the site for The PIT. We have been involved in a lawsuit, initiated by us, since May of this year to recoup any funds invested into a facility. We are now legally unable to open due to the withholding of permission from the landlords to get the building up to code due to several fire and safety issues they are unwilling to fix themselves or even grant us permission to fix.
Tens of thousands of dollars have now gone towards legal fees as the facility just sits there completely setup. We are now well over 100K invested and still growing. The past 6 months have been absolutely heartbreaking as we sit in court rooms and listen to untruths being spoken about us. Hearing our name being smeared by those who clearly had deceitful intentions when we had once trusted our goal was the same. Intentions that benefit themselves but destroy our county, intentions that our community need to be aware of.
We are grateful for the conviction God placed on our hearts to do more. At the time, we weren’t exactly sure what “do more” meant but over time our search revealed just how much needed to be done. Not only more for our youth but more for our community as a whole. Although we believed we were moving in the right direction at the time by expanding our existing non-profit, we know now that may look different.
We prayed that our family would be used to unite people from all walks of life for something bigger than athletics. That through challenging those involved to serve others before themselves, especially in the face of defeat, that we would grow into the best versions of ourselves.
Ryan and I have always believed that if we make decisions in our lives with the best intentions, keeping God first, that everything would always work out to serve the greater purpose. We feel that if we can push others to have faith through adversity, we must continue to do the same. This traumatic experience has greatly cost us not only financially but dampened our morale as well. Our family has sacrificed more than most can even fathom for a greater cause we truly believed in. Forces out of our control shifted our path abruptly but we are confident another door will open that will allow us to serve the youth in our community as God sees fit. We must believe that through this struggle, there is something bigger even if we may not see it now.
We thank each and every one of you for your support even when you didn’t know exactly what was happening. Believing in us has changed our perspective and we will forever be grateful for the opportunity. We will continue to update you in the coming months as we have more information.
-Ryan and Lacey Hamilton
