About a year ago, the city received a private donation of $500,000 to renovate the tennis complex at the Kanawha City Recreation Area. An architect was hired to design new courts and a wheelchair-accessible walkway to a not-yet-built clubhouse. The extra space needed for the walkway, however, meant that courts four and five ended up being only 12 feet apart instead of 24, which is the standard set by the National Tennis Association.
The architect's solution was to install a safety net between the two courts, but that made it impossible to play doubles on court four. So the city decided simply to declare it a singles-only court.
John Clancy, an experienced tennis player and former tennis sales and promotion representative, is furious. "I have traveled all the country for tennis, I have never seen anything like that in my whole life," he says. "This is not by design. They are just covering up their blunder."
Clancy is filing a lawsuit against the city for failing to use the donated money to properly renew the courts despite the problem having been explained to the city government before the final surface had been put down. Clancy also complains that the new lighting is worse than before, and that the city wasted money by spending $15,000 to remove a telephone pole in the court area only after the surface had already been completed.
Kitty Perrin, from United States Tennis Association's Middle States Section, notes that singles-only courts are not that unusual. "It's the solution at the moment," says Brian King, Charleston's parks and recreation director, "and it may well be the final one."
