A rendering of some of the tennis courts at the planned facility. (City documents)
A group that includes the owner of bowling alley River City Roll, a member of the Goodwin family and Arthur Ashe’s nephew are looking to build a new tennis facility near the late tennis legend’s namesake boulevard in Richmond.
Second Serve RVA, a newly created nonprofit, has proposed an eight-court indoor tennis center at 650 S. Sheppard St. in the Byrd Park area, just off Arthur Ashe Boulevard.
Along with local businesspeople Rob Long and Kirsti Goodwin, Second Serve is also led by a few locals with ties to the game like Tom Vozenilek and Irv Cantor of the Richmond Tennis Association, and David Harris, Metro Richmond Tennis Club’s executive director.
David Harris
Harris was introduced to tennis by his late uncle, Arthur Ashe, and grew up playing at Battery Park before going on to play at the collegiate level for Virginia Union University. He said that the new facility proposed by Second Serve would be a way to introduce the sport to other kids in the city.
“Unfortunately there are some barriers to entry. Costs of tennis rackets, shoes, having to pay for lessons, etcetera. But this is an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to lower those barriers to allow access to the youth,’” Harris said. “Those that don’t belong to a country club don’t have anywhere to play indoors in the City of Richmond. It becomes difficult to be able to extend your playing season through the winter because tennis is a year-round sport.”
The project is estimated to cost between $15 million and $20 million, money that would be raised from private donors and foundations, Harris said. While he said he can’t disclose the individuals and entities with whom the group has had preliminary discussions, he’s confident they’ll be able to raise the money needed to build the facility.
A site plan of the development.
The center would generate revenue by being rented for tournaments, events and private instruction. Second Serve is planning to fundraise enough to cover the center’s first three years of operational costs.
In addition to the eight indoor courts, the center would also house the Black Tennis Hall of Fame, which has existed as an organization since 2007 but has never had a physical home.
Second Serve’s facility would rise on a grassy area between Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary School and the 12-court Byrd Park outdoor tennis courts along Arthur Ashe Boulevard. The project site is currently owned by Richmond Public Schools and Second Serve is seeking to lease the land.
Harris said the facility is part of a broader effort to reintroduce tennis at RPS. Second Serve’s proposal includes resurfacing existing tennis courts at nine schools throughout the city, and Harris said the nonprofit would also offer courses for teachers to learn how to instruct the sport.
“That’s one of the big components to it. We’d renovate some of those courts, and we’d train individuals on how to teach the sport,” Harris said. “That would allow teachers to either teach (tennis) or have a tennis club or what have you.”
The site is currently a grassy area near the Carillon. (Mike Platania photo)
Second Serve unveiled its plans at a Richmond City School Board meeting earlier this month, as first reported by The Richmonder, and was met with skepticism from some board members, including Stephanie Rizzi, whose district includes the Sheppard Street site. Rizzi expressed concerns at the meeting about how to value of the land RPS would be leasing out to Second Serve through a proposed long-term ground lease.
While it’s unclear how many acres the facility would span, the entire 10.5-acre parcel it’s part of, which includes Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary School, was most recently assessed by the city at $12.6 million.
A third-party appraisal of the land’s fair market value commissioned by RPS found that its highest and best use would be to subdivide it into single family detached lots. Based on that criteria and recent sales of single-family lots in the neighborhood, the appraisal found the land to be worth over $3.9 million per acre.
Rizzi said she thinks there are still a lot of details to be worked out.
“It’s not a complete no-brainer. We have to think about this in terms of what’s going to be best for our district,” Rizzi said at the board meeting.
Harris, who was part of the 2019 effort to rename Boulevard to Arthur Ashe Boulevard, said he understands why the school board is skeptical.
“I understand politics is very questionable of things that organizations want to do, and I respect that. It’s their duty to do their due diligence and make sure that it’s not just another opportunity to grab land from a governmental entity,” he said.
Harris also said he sees the project as a chance to build an athletics facility in the city that won’t meet the same fate as the Arthur Ashe Athletic Center, the 72,000-square-foot facility near The Diamond that was built in the 1980s and included basketball courts and a track, but later fell into disrepair. It’s now set to be demolished as part of the city’s Diamond District project.
“We’re not here to repeat the mistakes of the past. We’re here to do it the right way, because we’ve seen the mistakes. We’ve seen how Arthur Ashe Center went into disrepair and nobody wanted to repair the place,” Harris said.
“This is our opportunity to really get it right and have Richmond on the map for tennis again like it used to be in the seventies, eighties and early nineties,” he said.
Second Serve’s presentation at the school board’s July 7 meeting served as the group’s public introduction of the proposal to the board.
The nonprofit is now preparing to provide written responses to the school board’s questions and concerns around the project. The matter is not yet listed on any future school board meeting agendas.
Print Article