Sunday, November 22, 2009
Editorial: The ball is in Roanoke's court
A tennis group wants to use Countryside's indoor courts to teach youth. Can the city afford it?
From the RoundTable blog
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A request by the Blue Ridge Junior Tennis League, on the surface, sounds reasonable: The group would lease indoor courts at Countryside Golf Course, rent court time to players and use the funds to teach the game to youngsters.
Roanoke City Council members greeted the idea with enthusiasm last week, with Councilwoman Gwen Mason going so far as to challenge Mayor David Bowers and Councilman Dave Trinkle to a doubles match to raise funds.
It will take more than a friendly wager to get the building and courts in shape. How much more isn't known, and the dollar amount should dictate whether the tennis league will have its wish granted.
Plus, there is the added glitch of whether who gets to use the tennis building is the city council's decision to make. Roanoke is currently negotiating with a firm to manage Countryside, and City Manger Darlene Burcham explained the tennis building is presently part of the deal.
Roanoke will contractually obligate city taxpayers to make multimillion-dollar improvements to the golf course, principally to restore cart paths and sprinklers. Until now, improvements to the tennis courts have not been raised.
The tennis building, vacant for a couple of years, is capped by a reportedly leaky roof. The cost to repair the neglect is unknown.
The city council recently completed a lengthy and involved process in designating capital improvement projects. The tennis building was not mentioned then.
In theory, improvements could be added to a recreation department laundry list that is supposed to attack a hodge-podge of long-neglected projects. If the tennis building jumps in the line, something else will need to wait.
Perhaps there is a way the city could pull it off through contract negotiations with Countryside's new management, but, again, this is doubtful. When proposals were sought for the golf course, some hoped that offering a long-term lease would prompt a new management company to help with capital improvements. This does not seem to have come to pass.
Too bad no one had the foresight to look at all of Countryside's assets from the outset.
