Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper provided some details for the team's planned new facility in South Carolina in a conversation with NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport on Tuesday.
Tepper told Rapoport on the *RapSheet & Friends* podcast that while the organization intends to build their new headquarters in the Palmetto State, they haven't "closed on a location yet." The Panthers owner added the team knows "where we want to go."
The South Carolina Senate agreed two weeks ago to provide around $115 million in tax breaks to the Panthers to move their practice fields and headquarters out of North Carolina. The state General Assembly officially passed an amended bill on Monday. South Carolina governor Henry McMaster has yet to sign the bill, but that move is considered a formality.
Carolina is expected to build its complex on a 200-acre plot of land in Rock Hill, S.C. once the bill is passed. The Panthers are reported to want to start construction later this year and move into the complex in 2022, per The State. Included in the complex will reportedly be the team HQ, a sports medicine facility and two practice facilities, including a 10,000-seat indoor field.
The organization currently operates out of Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, where, Tepper emphasized, the team is making progress on constructing a temporary bubble.
"I made it a priority to have an indoor practice bubble where our practice facility is now. So we're building a temporary bubble that's supposed to be done by August 1," Tepper told Rapoport. "It gets a little hot in Carolina in the summer. I just think that everything we can do, that I can do that can give us any kind of edges that we didn't have before, we should be doing as fast as we can do it."
A major reason for Carolina's interest in building a new facility is providing top-notch health care to its players. As things stand in Charlotte, injured Panthers players have to be taken off campus for medical evaluation.
Tepper said the club will team up with Atrium Health if and when their new facility is constructed to eliminate that hassle.
"I think we will have state-of-the-art medical facilities right near us, which we really don't have right now," Tepper told Rapoport. "We have a very good training staff and we have very good people there, but sometimes you need better facilities and better things."
