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Distinguished Facility-of-the-Year Awards: Inside Job

By Peter Francesconi

These two facilities — one clay, one hard — are excellent examples of indoor court construction.

Three facilities received honors in the 2012 Racquet Sports Industry/American Sports Builders Association Facility-of-the-Year Awards, and one of those — the Roberta Alison Baumgardner Tennis Facility at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa — was honored as an “Outstanding” winner in our February issue. The other two, both new construction, were picked to receive “Distinguished” honors: One is an indoor soft court facility, also in Alabama, and the other is a massive hard-court center in Virginia Beach.

The Gulf Coast Tennis Club has four red ClayTech courts inside a steel building in Gulf Shores, Ala. The specialty contractor needed to spend an extra week fine-patching the poorly installed foundation slab because the slab contractor didn’t laser-screed, but even with that delay, the entire facility was built in four months. The owner wasn’t happy with conventionally available irrigation methods, so a custom-fabricated boom-mounted hose system was designed and built for the project. The building has four HVAC units, and there are garage-door openings for natural ventilation. There’s also a 360-degree elevated viewing platform in the middle the courts, and the facility features an on-site restaurant with bar for dinner and drinks, and a beautifully landscaped outdoor patio with flat-screen TV and fire pit, in addition to a fully stocked pro-shop.

The Virginia Beach Tennis & Country Club’s 10 new hard courts are arranged in a straight line inside a “long bay” building of nearly 82,500 square feet. The project, which also was completed in four months, included space for a pro shop, office, club room, workout area and locker rooms, kitchen, baby-sitting room and activity room. The construction challenge was that the immense building only has one construction access door through which to transport materials and equipment. All material had to be carried by hand or wheelbarrow throughout the 120- by 513-foot building. And since the air conditioning wasn’t operational at the beginning of the job, the crew had to create areas to bring in portable fans.

Gulf Coast Tennis Club
Gulf Shores, Ala.
(Nominated by Fast-Dry Courts Inc.)
Architect/Engineer: Casa Designs
General Contractor: Casa Designs
Specialty Contractor: Fast-Dry Courts Inc.
Number of Courts: 4
Surface: ClayTech & Har-Tru Italian Red Clay
Fencing: Fast-Dry Courts Inc.
Court Accessories: Fast-Dry Courts Inc. & 10-S Tennis Supply

Virginia Beach Tennis & Country Club
Virginia Beach, Va.
(Nominated by Tennis Courts Inc.)
Specialty Contractor: Tennis Courts Inc.
Number of Courts: 10
Surface: DecoTurf II
Nets: Har-Tru Sports
Posts: Edwards
Curtains, Divider Nets: Putterman Athletics

For details on the 2013 Outstanding Facility-of-the-Year Awards, contact the ASBA at 866-501-ASBA or info@sportsbuilders.org, or visit sportsbuilders.org.

See all articles by Peter Francesconi

About the Author

Peter Francesconi is editorial director of Tennis Industry magazine.

From the July 2013 issue
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