Tennis usually is played either on grass or a hard surface. Players like Rhonda Johnson who use certain New Haven city courts get to play on both, and don’t like it one bit.
But that will change at two city parks in time for next season, parks commissioners were told at their monthly meeting Wednesday night. The courts at East Shore Park will get a complete makeover and those at Edgewood will be refurbished, a process that should keep them from cracking for at least 30 months, said Robert Levine, director of parks, recreation and trees.
In a visit Wednesday evening, the Edgewood courts were replete with cracks running parallel and perpendicular to the flight of the yellow tennis balls. All were filled with two-inch-high grass, and some along the borders of the individual courts had more significant growth of various plants, some a foot high.
The courts were damaged in 2007 storms.
“Look, it looks like hedges are growing there,” said Larry Waters of New Haven, standing in photo, who is recovering from hip surgery and is “just a spectator for now.” He chatted with Bruce Hargett, who said he also was a spectator but seemed to be holding court from his chair at the west side of the courts. They were joined by Lee Davis, a downtown resident who said she had just vanquished a foe at a Yale court and had come to play at Edgewood.
The fix-up comes as a result of the one change aldermen made to the mayor’s proposed budget for next year. They sliced off $55,000 that was earmarked for Tweed-New Haven Airport and added it to $100,000 already in hand, to pay for the work at both parks. The job will go out to bid in about a month and should be completed before winter, said Levine.
Players at the busy Edgewood park courts were delighted with the news that the cracks in the seven hard-surface courts will be filled. Levine also promised that the work would not produce a “dead zone” where the cracks were covered over.
“That’s exciting,” Davis said, especially about the dead-zone problem, where the ball does not bounce as lively as it otherwise would.
They said they were a bit disappointed that their courts would not get the full treatment that East Shore will. At that park, the surface will be cleared away, the underlying concrete milled and the courts paved and the surface painted. That park had the interim filling in of cracks done in 2006.
Other bystanders claimed the Edgewood courts are the busiest in the city, an assertion that seemed to be borne out by the number of people playing late into Wednesday evening. Each court was busy, and there were many cars in the parking lot off West Rock Avenue.
The filling of cracks and other surface work carry a 30-month guarantee, so the work will be reviewed once that runs out to see if the courts need a complete redo as East Shore did.