Tennis players make their presence felt at Parks and Recreation Master Plan Open House.
The last time you received one of these BTA email blasts we asked you to help us out by attending a Master Plan Open House. It was being hosted by Boulder Parks and Recreation (BPR) on June 24th, and we hoped a show of force would demonstrate that “more and better tennis courts” was an important issue for the Boulder tennis-playing community.
Well, now we’re back to tell you: Great job! Thanks to the many who showed up, the effort was a huge success. We can’t pretend we did an exact head count, but by rough estimate 75 to 80 percent of attendees at the open house were tennis players. (It helped that we asked all tennis folks to wear their favorite tennis hat.) So a big thanks to the folks who took time on their Thursday night to attend and voice their concerns.
In fact, due to our overwhelming presence, once the introductory presentation by BPR staff was over, the open house became by and large a meeting about tennis. In the breakout sessions, where members of the public discussed their issues with representatives of BPR, it was not unusual to see five or six tennis players gathered around the PBR Director or the BPR Planning Manager hashing out various issues like court overcrowding, poor court maintenance, missing restroom facilities, etc.
In addition to the local turnout, we were lucky enough to have a couple of very knowledgeable visitors from USTA Colorado (better known as CTA). Our thanks to Fritz Garger, USTA Colorado executive director, and Kristy Harris, USTA Colorado community development director, for accepting our invitation and showing up at the open house. They stayed for the whole event and mixed freely with both local tennis players and the BPR leadership, and were able to share their wealth of experience around coordinating complicated tennis projects and building public/private partnerships to get those projects done. And their presence highlighted the fact that our court maintenance issues are not just a local problem – they also have a domino effect on the surrounding communities’ league teams.
In short, the whole event became another chance to make our concerns heard, and to demonstrate that the Boulder tennis community is willing to flex its muscles to address the long-standing and problems plaguing local public court tennis. So thanks again to everyone who showed up to make it work! We members of the BTA Board will keep monitoring the situation and advocating for more and better tennis courts for the Boulder area. And we’ll keep in touch for next steps to make it happen for all of us.
See you on the courts!
BTA Board of Directors
