HERKIMER — The Herkimer 9 Foundation is on a mission to honor Herkimer as the first birthplace of basketball and promote that legacy by revitalizing the Main Street corridor through its Herkimer 9, LLC. Both are the brainchild of Scott Flansburg, a Herkimer native who returned to the area during the pandemic. He created the […]
HERKIMER — The Herkimer 9 Foundation is on a mission to honor Herkimer as the first birthplace of basketball and promote that legacy by revitalizing the Main Street corridor through its Herkimer 9, LLC.
Both are the brainchild of Scott Flansburg, a Herkimer native who returned to the area during the pandemic. He created the foundation in September 2021 with the goal of recognizing Lambert Will for developing the game of basketball. James Naismith is credited for inventing the game in Springfield, Massachusetts in December 1891, but some believe Will, who was Herkimer YMCA director at the time, came up with the concept for basketball months earlier.
That goal grew to include creating some sort of anchor that would help revitalize North Main Street. The approach “was take those buildings that existed when it happened ... and revitalize them,” Flansburg says.
The result of that idea is a vision that includes creating the world’s largest basketball attraction featuring a 32-foot-diameter basketball, building an athletics complex to host youth-basketball tournaments and other athletic events, and creating a 30,000-square-foot green space.
Similar to how the Utica University Nexus Center and National Baseball Hall of Fame have boosted sports tourism in their immediate regions, Flansburg believes his foundation can do the same for Herkimer.
“Why not the Lambert Will Center for Basketball in Herkimer?” he asks. He projects such a center could host events year-round, drawing thousands to the region.
Flansburg would also like to acquire the former Palmer House building, now home to some apartments and storefronts, and renovate it into a basketball-themed hotel with 30 suites, each featuring an NBA team.
Work is already underway at the former H.M. Quackenbush factory building, which the Herkimer 9 Foundation owns. While pavement is being torn out to make way for the green space, the foundation is hard at work finalizing plans to turn the former factory into a STEAM learning center, he says.
“Our goal is we will have a museum about Mr. Quackenbush,” he notes. The facility will also have some mixed-use space and could serve as the home of the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame. “We’ve got a lot of suggestions we’re weighing,” Flansburg adds.
Other possible plans include creating a pedestrian place on North Main Street, adding civic gates to signal the entrance to the historic basketball district, and adding a historical marker for the former Herkimer YMCA location where Lambert is thought to have invented basketball.
“You can’t fix everything, but ... we could fix that one block that has all that history on it,” Flansburg says.
The majority of funding for the project comes from private donations and investments, he says. Events such as golf tournaments have brought in additional funds.
The project is a labor of love for the Herkimer native. Flansburg was born and raised in Herkimer before spending many years traveling as The Human Calculator. He is even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest human calculator.
“I’ve committed three years of my life to this project,” he says. At the doorstep of Cooperstown and the Adirondacks, Herkimer should be a vibrant community, he says. If he has his way, it soon will be.
