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U.S. investor Nick Gross is joining Sacramento Kings G Russell Westbrook in \u201cbacking a new entertainment district in Oklahoma City anchored by a new soccer stadium<\/a>,\u201d according to Maxwell Adler of BLOOMBERG NEWS. Echo founder & CEO Christian Kanady said that an investment firm tied to Gross, along with Russell Westbrook Enterprises<\/a> and Echo\u2019s venture capital arm Echo Investment Capital<\/a>, are \u201cpouring more than\u201d $1B into the 50-acre project. A spokesperson for Gross said that his father, Pacific Investment Management Co. co-founder Bill Gross, is not \u201cinvolved in the Oklahoma City project.\u201d At the center of the district will be a \u201csoccer stadium with 10,000-plus seats that the city has committed about\u201d $120M of public funds to, \u201csome of the money will come from the sale of\u201d $50M in \u201cvoter-approved general-obligation bonds.\u201d Gross said, \u201cI really looked at Oklahoma City as an opportunity. It\u2019s one of the top five highest emerging cities in terms of where people are moving to and where the action is happening.\u201d Oklahoma City and its private development partners hope that the new stadium will \u201cposition the city to capitalize on the popularity of soccer.\u201d Construction of the stadium is \u201cexpected to begin next year,\u201d with a \u201cscheduled opening in January 2028\u201d (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 12\/15<\/i><\/a>). <\/p>\n MAKING A DIFFERENCE<\/b>: In Oklahoma City, Steve Lackmeyer noted Gross is making an \u201ceight-figure investment\u201d with a \u201cfocus on community-driven education\u201d powered by Gross Labs\u2019 future-ready learning platform for middle and high school students, Find Your Grind. Gross said that Find Your Grind, which will be expanded to Oklahoma City via the stadium district, works with kids to \u201clook at who they want to be and not \u2018what do they want to be.\u2019\u201d Gross noted that the program is currently \u201cbeing used in 200 school districts.\u201d His goal is to \u201cexpand it throughout Oklahoma City, within which 25 school districts fully or partially operate.\u201d In a district in which Westbrook has already stated that he will be \u201cbringing his eye on fashion to the district as part of his role as creative director,\u201d Gross said that the \u201ceducational component will not be limited\u201d to Find Your Grind. The overall development is \u201cexpected to hit\u201d $2B with plans including \u201chotels, restaurants, entertainment and housing\u201d (OKLAHOMAN, 12\/15<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sportsbusinessjournal.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. investor Nick Gross is joining Sacramento Kings G Russell Westbrook in \u201cbacking a new entertainment district in Oklahoma City anchored by a new soccer stadium,\u201d according to Maxwell Adler of BLOOMBERG NEWS. Echo founder & CEO Christian Kanady said that an investment firm tied to Gross, along with Russell Westbrook Enterprises and Echo\u2019s venture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22443,374504],"class_list":["post-2201493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-soccer","tag-sustainability"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2201493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2201494,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201493\/revisions\/2201494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2201493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2201493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2201493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}