Family stakes future on Brier Creek sports facility

RALEIGH, NC (WTVD) -- Dan Lefebvre once toiled 90 hours a week working in venture capital.

The hours now aren't all that different, but the job certainly is.

As the owner of MAC Sports and Entertainment, Lefebvre spends all day working to maintain and improve his sports facility "The MAC," which is located just off 540 in Brier Creek by the airport.

The facility opened in the spring of 2017. It's a complex of fields and beach volleyball courts - a necessary offspring of his first entrepreneurial effort - TRI SPORTS.

Lefebvre knew back in 2001 that the Triangle's growing and largely transplant population of young professionals would want an athletic and social outlet.

TRI SPORTS was created to answer that call.

Based on fun and social sports like kickball and flag football, TRI SPORTS helped people struggling to find new friend circles after college.

Lefebvre soon realized there was a dire shortage of fields relative to demand, so "The MAC," meaning meet and compete, was the next necessary step.

Competing against commercial and residential real estate developers for a large tract of land was a non-starter, so he used satellite imagery to find his plot. It's deep in the back of an industrial complex and as he described it, was "dilapidated" enough to not be a viable spot for those other developers.

Though the property was not for sale, Lefebvre sold the owner on his vision. Three years later, "The MAC" is very much a work in progress, but Lefebvre is a firm believer in his vision, "people need people."