"If these courts are closed, where are kids from this community going to
learn to play tennis? Where are the adults and seniors going to play?
Where are the pros who make their living there going to teach?"
Mrs. Myers wants to know.
Tennis players started swatting felt-covered balls around in
New York City's 369th Regiment armory on Fifth Avenue in Harlem
fifty years ago. Some of them were pretty good -- Arthur Ashe,
Althea Gibson, and Pancho Gonzalez to name a few. Earl "The Pearl"
Monroe, better known for his skills on another kind of court,
was a frequent recreational player. John McEnroe's doubles partner,
Peter Fleming, worked out there. More recently, Thomas and James
Blake from Yonkers came up through the tennis programs there and
went on to the professional tour, James as the number one ranked
collegian out of Harvard, 1998's College Player of the Year.
So there was no small concern when a rumor rocketed around the courts in the cavernous, down-at-heels armory between 142nd and l43rd Streets that tennis there might be on the way out. The Police Athletic League, so the rumor went, was taking over and converting the space to its brand of recreation -- basketball and track and field, aimed largely at youngsters in afternoon and evening programs.
The PAL already had taken over the armory on 168th Street near Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and turned it into a dedicated track and field faciility. And it had opened a new, multipurpose facility at 119th Street and Manhattan Avenue. Players at the armory's Harlem Tennis Center started to feel embattled. Was the PAL reaching for a recreational stranglehold on Harlem that would squeeze them out of their beloved -- and inexpensive -- courts? Was Governor Pataki's administration, hungry to produce more revenue from the dilapidated landmark and proceed with a badly-needed renovation for which it would pay nothing, a collaborator in the tennis center's sacking?
Beyond the self-interest of the players lay another question: Without an affordable, all-weather tennis facility in Harlem, where would the future Venuses and Serenas discover the game that with too few exceptions, at least in the United States, has launched its stars from suburban rather than urban settings.
Sarah Allen puts it bluntly, brandishing a list of eight multi-use sports facilities between 135th and 145th Streets, and Fifth and Eighth Avenues. "Harlem has enough basketball courts already," she says.
Mrs. Allen and Arvelia Myers are the forces behind the ad hoc Friends of the Harlem Tennis Center, which is fighting to keep tennis at the armory. Mrs. Allen is a player whose daughter Leslie was ranked in the top twenty in the 1980s, Mrs. Myers a teaching pro. Both are women of a certain age, with few illusions. As Mrs. Allen puts it, "I don't know much about politics, but I've got a nose and I can smell." Their beef is less with the PAL than with the officials of HIDTA, initials that stand for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. HIDTA seeks to transform drug zones, in part by applying forfeited drug money to redevelopment. It gets big eyes when it sees an armory, like the one on 168th Street that it funneled money into under PAL. Now, it's dangling $1 million in drug forfeitures as an incentive to redo the Harlem Tennis Center's home into a multi-purpose recreational facility. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau helps decide where HIDTA money goes; he is also chairman of the PAL board.
What HIDTA failed to do -- a serious mistake, by Mrs. Allen's lights -- was to take into account the needs and feelings of the tennis crowd when it sought an alliance with the PAL. The PAL's takeover of the lease from the longtime tennis concessionaire, the Harlem Tennis Center, was announced as a fait accompli last fall. Players signing up for the winter season at the Harlem Tennis Center were told they'd have only until March to play; then the armory would close for renovations before the PAL took over. The eight courts would be reduced to four, and those wouldn't be open all the time.
As it turned out, no lease had been signed. When they learned that, Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Myers sprang into action. Magically, petitions, letters to elected officials, and media call sheets appeared at the center's check-in desk. Players began signing their names and making calls, urging that tennis be retained at the center. Somebody called Public Advocate Mark Green's office. Another called Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields. New York 1 personally did a story. So did Channel 9. Meetings were scheduled.
"If these courts are closed, where are kids from this community going to
learn to play tennis? Where are the adults and seniors going to play?
Where are the pros who make their living there going to teach?"
Mrs. Myers wants to know.
As Mrs. Myers suggests, a wide range of players uses the courts. Four colleges -- CCNY, John Jay, Long Island University, and Bernard Baruch -- practice and play matches there. Youngsters from in and outside the city are introduced to tennis through no less than eleven junior programs. And adult and senior recreational players play there, mostly at night and on weekends but during weekdays, too. There are no other public indoor courts nearby.
Those are the rational reasons to continue tennis at the armory. But like all sports, tennis and the passion for it sometimes are irrational, and it takes a touch of the irrational to explain the Harlem Tennis Centers' appeal. It has no modern facilities, no comfortable locker room with towels, no hot showers, no well-stocked pro shop, no lounge or juice bar. Construction across from the entrance has rendered 143rd Street a dusty, muddy no-man's land for parking, and a weedy lot at the end of the street is usually locked.
What it does have is a disarming informality, a slouchy, amiable atmosphere that's as comfortable as old shoes. The staff is low key, and often consists of just Claude Cargill, 85 and one of the operating partners, hanging out in a warmup suit and baseball cap. Court fees are low enough that when your hour is up, nobody elbows you off and starts blasting away before you can escape the court, the way they do at the $75 per hour places in Midtown. The radio station is permanently set to WBGO, where jazz and blues make up the musical menu. There's usually a chess game going on, or checkers, with or without kibitzing, under the posters of tennis stars past and present that adorn the walls. Kids and their tutors do homework together.
And there's the history. The first tennis concession at the armory was Nick's Indoor Tennis, which began in the 1950s. Then, the only light came from the windows near the ceiling, and the court lines were simply painted on the building's wooden floors. It made for a zesty game. "It was so fast. You had to be really quick to play the ball," said the center's longtime pro, Zack Davis.
Peter Schwed, 90, who played with his eight-member doubles group at the Harlem courts up to this year, remembers that frequent stoppages of play were required to pluck splinters from the balls.
A rubberized mat that was added in the 1980s slowed things down a bit,
and eliminated the splinter problem. Then, in 1987, Mayor Ed Koch
appropriated the armory for a homeless men's shelter. Five years later,
Koch's successor, David Dinkins, a tennis player and fan, restored the
rightful order, and the players returned. In the interim, the Fifth
Avenue entrance at the front of the building had been supplanted by a
side door on 143rd Street, and a climb up metal stairs to what had become
the front desk. A rubberized plastic grid called Metaflex, used in
England as an outdoor surface for quick drainage, is now the playing
surface. It can be folded up when National Guard drills and other
events take over the 60,000 square foot drill floor.
That floor sags in places, and that's one reason the space at the armory is in play. The $1 million in forfeited drug money is only part of a $3.5 million renovation fund. The city is putting up $1.85 million, the Harlem Empowerment Zone another $500,000 and the PAL $200,000.
But the renovations have been stalled pending a new lease on the space. The old one expired nearly a year ago. Governor Pataki's office is reportedly pushing to conclude a new one. Meanwhile, the five original partners -- the Mission Society of New York and the 369th Regiment veterans as well as the PAL, Pro-Am and Harlem Junior Tennis -- all have views about what should happen to the space.
Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Myers see PAL's plan to cut the number of courts in half and eliminate tennis during after-school hours as the first step on a slippery slope. Mrs. Allen points to the costs published by HIDTA for the sports complex it envisions. Some $45,000 is slated for four basketball courts only $5,000 for four tennis courts. "The next thing you know, it will be two courts," Mrs. Myers said. "And then there won't be any tennis here at all."
The women want all eight courts to remain in operation.
"There's a need," Mrs. Allen stated. She says that if the Harlem Tennis Center closes, there won't be any affordable, public, indoor courts for eighty blocks. All-weather tennis will recede to lower Manhattan, where transportation and extravagant court fees make it virtually off-limits to many of the Harlem Center's patrons.
"I don't know how those courts could be replaced," says one of the Harlem Tennis Centers longtime players, Steve Vergia of Manhattan. "I told somebody it was the eighth wonder of the world. Everybody's welcome there. Everybody's family."
(text courtesy of Tennis Week magazine, 05/15/01, pp. 16-17 -- HTC pictures added by WebMaster)
Click here to visit the Harlem Tennis Center (HTC) home page.