City talks tennis at school site

CITY HALL — The City Council voted Tuesday to allow city officials to pursue talks with the Glendale Unified School District to consider Glendale High School as a new location for tennis courts to replace those being demolished at Central Park in June.

The council voted 3-2, with Councilmen Ara Najarian and Bob Yousefian voting against.

The existing courts are being demolished to make way for an 18,000-square-foot Adult Recreation Center to be built at Central Park later this year.

The courts were originally scheduled to be demolished in December 2006, but demolition was pushed back to allow more time to find replacement courts, City Manager Jim Starbird said.

After looking at several options to replace the tennis courts, the option staff recommended creating six new tennis courts for community use by renovating the six existing courts on the Glendale High School Campus, said George Chapjian, director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services.

The courts would be for joint use between students and the community, with the community most likely using them after 6 p.m. on school days, Chapjian said.

If approved, the nearly $850,000 project would include lighting improvements, parking, handicap accessibility, restrooms and resurfacing of the courts, a report by city staff said.

“[The courts] are not in good shape,” Chapjian said.

Besides the suggested option of renovations to the high-school tennis courts, staff had also looked at the option of constructing two new tennis courts at Fremont Park, which would sit east of the existing eight courts, also at an estimated cost of about $850,000.

“[The addition would] really make the park look more like a tennis facility than a park,” Chapjian said.

They also examined building two tennis courts at the Glendale Sports Complex, north of the soccer fields, for an estimated cost of about $1.2 million, and converting basketball courts on the southeast area of Glendale High School into two tennis courts for a cost not disclosed in the staff report.

Councilman Frank Quintero supported staff’s suggestion for the tennis-court renovations, noting that the school is in the vicinity of the former courts.

“It keeps the courts fairly close geographically to where they were,” he said.

Najarian and Yousefian both raised concern that the property does not belong to the city.

“I would feel much more comfortable putting the tennis courts on some property that we own,” Najarian said.

After working out details with school officials, city staff will return to council for an update.

QUESTION

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