RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – The Richmond tennis community hosted a town hall at Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary on Thursday night to address concerns about a proposed indoor tennis facility near the school.<\/p>\n
One concern is that the facility would eliminate a significant portion of green space behind the elementary school and directly across from the Byrd Park tennis courts.<\/p>\n
The Second Serve Foundation<\/a>, in partnership with Metro Richmond Tennis Club and the Richmond Tennis Association, wants to build a $20 million, eight-court indoor tennis facility<\/a> on the grassy field, formerly known as Rueger Playground.<\/p>\n Virginia Young, who has lived across the street for four years, said she and her neighbors are concerned about increased traffic in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cVery alarmed about this with the traffic that we already get from baseball, from schools, you know, children crossing all the time. And then of course Sheppard [Street] is very busy with people getting to Nickel Bridge,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n Young also pointed to wildlife that would be affected by the development.<\/p>\n \u201cAs someone who lives here, I see a lot of wildlife, believe it or not. We have foxes, we have deer, we have owls. We\u2019ve even seen owls perched up in these, what, 300-year-old trees, that would go down,\u201d Young said. \u201cBecause if you look at the layout that Second Serve has given us, it goes right overtop of these trees.\u201d<\/p>\n Second Serve wants to lease the property from Richmond Public Schools, pledging to cover the cost of upkeep and operations, including lessons for RPS students.<\/p>\n The foundation says the land has sat vacant for decades with no purpose, but parents and residents say children regularly use the space for sports, festivals and outdoor movies.<\/p>\n Debbie Powers, who lives nearby and volunteers at the school, said the trees and green space cannot be replaced.<\/p>\n \u201cThese big old oak trees you can\u2019t replace. And there\u2019s not enough green space in the city. I\u2019m a native and there\u2019s not enough green space in the city,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n Powers said she helped create garden beds and outdoor learning spaces for students.<\/p>\n \u201cI was responsible for getting all of the volunteers to build all the garden beds that were raised, all the benches and tables, and all the greenery that we put in here for the kids to learn about how to garden, dig in the dirt. They don\u2019t have a lot of places to dig in the dirt in Richmond. And this is a perfect place for these elementary school kids to do that,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n Many residents say they are not opposed to an indoor tennis facility but do not want it at this location.<\/p>\n \u201cGreat idea. It\u2019s just a very peculiar place to put it,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n The president-elect of the Richmond Tennis Association said the proposed indoor tennis facility would be a financial boon to the city, helping attract national-level competitions, and that city leaders and Richmond Parks and Recreation recommended the site as an ideal location for the building.<\/p>\n The Richmond tennis community said it is open to hearing residents\u2019 concerns to find solutions that work for everyone.<\/p>\n Copyright 2025 WWBT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – The Richmond tennis community hosted a town hall at Lois Harrison-Jones Elementary on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[4,2408,4934,4932,4931,4933,4935,99,428,4930],"class_list":{"0":"post-304993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breaking-news-video","10":"tag-live-speeches","11":"tag-live-updates","12":"tag-live-video","13":"tag-press-conference","14":"tag-real-time-coverage","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tennis","17":"tag-video-updates"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}