Remember when Nerd Street Gamers was just a small Northern Liberties operation?

Today the organization announced plans for a 40,000 square foot video gaming campus at the intersection of Broad and Callowhill in the heart of Philadelphia.

Here’s some information from their site:

PHILADELPHIA, September 15, 2020 – Nerd Street Gamers, the national esports infrastructure company dedicated to powering competitive opportunities and events for gamers, announces it will open the world’s first esports industry campus called “The Block” at 401 North Broad Street in Philadelphia. The space will not only function as Nerd Street Gamers’ new corporate headquarters, but it will also include global broadcast studios, dedicated training centers for professional teams and schools, educational space for community partners, and, subject to zoning approval, a Localhost facility capable of hosting community, scholastic, amateur and pro-level events, and programming.

Strategically located at the juncture of multiple long-haul and metro fiber routes, the facility’s internet capabilities support a near-zero lag time for players, shaving off crucial milliseconds when competing online.

Once known as the Terminal Commerce Building, 401 North Broad is owned by Netrality, the operator of strategic, fiber dense data centers that facilitate the interconnection between major fiber networks enabling regional connectivity.

Wow. Holy shit. Zero lag? I would have loved to have something like this when I was 15 years old and playing Diablo 2 on AOL 5.0. We’ve come quite a long way since the days of four friends sitting around and talking mad shit while firing off green and red turtle shells in Mario Kart.

Look at the video clip previewing this new joint. It’s insane:

https://youtu.be/caiZlUC2hEU

Pretty awesome.

Soon, we’re gonna have this facility, plus the new Philadelphia Fusion arena, which is being built next to Xfinity Live down at the sports complex.

I haven’t spoken to the Comcast folks in a while, but T1 CEO Joe Marsh told me this back in April:

“In March, we were going to start doing the digging, some of the moving over of the things on Xfinity Live property, like the retention basin, where the (miniature) football field is. We were just going to move that over to the left side of the bar area. We got the fence up, and by the time we put the fence up, we couldn’t get going (because of COVID). The original plan was to have steel coming out of the ground in July, which is the heart of baseball season. You would have been able to see some of the building in July, but now we’re a little bit delayed on that. We keep having weekly calls with our architects and our construction team and we’re just figuring out when we’re gonna be able to get going again. It just depends on how long the work-from-home and no construction is allowed to go on. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern based on the Governor’s guideline.”

Need to follow up on that, but for real, we’re gonna have two killer esports facilities in Philadelphia in the very near future.