Plaza tennis courts are crumbling. Will Kansas City put apartments there instead?

Reality Check is a Star series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@kcstar.com.

When the Country Club Plaza was brand new, kids played baseball on parkland immediately to the east of Kansas City’s first shopping center. But the ballfield was too small for a proper game. Homers might rain down on the Model Ts puttering by on Brush Creek Boulevard. So the parks board had tennis courts built there instead. Four at first, then five more.

Almost a century later, people still swat those yellow balls over and into the nets at the Plaza Tennis Center. The original clay courts are long gone, twice replaced by now 14 hard-surfaced courts that the city has allowed to fall into such disrepair that the University of Missouri-Kansas City had to give up hosting the Summit League’s tennis championship tournament for men and women that was to have been held at the tennis center last April.

Those public courts still haven’t been resurfaced, but UMKC women’s tennis head coach Kendell Hale has an even bigger concern this winter. Might the city give up on the Plaza tennis courts entirely and turn the site over to a developer to erect a commercial building there?

Not only would that be a blow to his program and those of at least three other schools that use the center regularly – Rockhurst University, among them – but Hale thinks the community would suffer an immeasurable loss by getting rid of that landmark so someone can profit from a real estate deal.

“The historical significance of that place is unbelievable,” Hale said. “What was it, since 1928 that it’s been in existence? And it’s been pivotal in hosting national championships and brought tons of revenue into the city multiple years. I just think they’re (the courts) a goldmine, if people would just understand that, but it’s hard to get business people to think that way.”

More density wanted

Business people have for years had their eyes on the 3 to 4-acre tract at 4747 Mill Creek Parkway. Last year, Kansas City Manager Brian Platt convened a meeting to discuss the potential for redeveloping land that, he believes, could be far more valuable if something was on it more than the tennis courts, clubhouse and pro shop.

“There’s a lot of benefit there to more density, some more amenities, and to doing more with a higher and better use for that site,” Platt recently told the Kansas City Business Journal, which first reported the potential for redeveloping the tennis center site.

Now that the Plaza is about to get a new owner looking for ways to attract more shoppers, one way to do that is to have more of them living and working within walking distance of those stores, Platt told The Star.

“New development is certainly worth thinking about for this entire area, and how we can best partner with the new Plaza ownership group,” Platt said in an interview this week.

Mayor Quinton Lucas has called the change in ownership “probably one of the most exciting developments on the Country Club Plaza in the last 25 years.” During that period, the Plaza declined under two sets of owners from being among the most exclusive shopping areas in the Midwest to a property with multiple vacancies and an uncertain future.

The tennis center is one of several undeveloped or underdeveloped pieces of property around the Plaza that would provide opportunities for adding the density Platt’s talking about. Another prime spot is on the western side, where several buildings were demolished to make way for a new Nordstrom store that never happened.

Several business people have pitched the city with ideas for reusing the tennis center site, two sources who were part of those discussions said. Among the ideas was to put the courts on top of buildings on that site, or to move them to other city-owned property along Brush Creek.

But selling the land to a developer wouldn’t be easy. Under the city charter, it takes a city-wide vote to remove even the smallest scrap of parkland from the city’s parks inventory. This month, voters approved such a disposition of parkland in Clay County.

Then the land must go out for bids, which adds one more uncertainty to any developer who might encourage the parks department to sell them a piece of property. So city officials are also exploring whether it might be better to repurpose the tennis center land by negotiating a deal with a developer who might rent the city-owned land by signing a 99-year lease.

Cracked courts

The parks department contracts with private companies to run the facility. Genesis Health Clubs is the current vendor, but you don’t have to be a Genesis member to play on the the lighted courts, which are open from March 1 to Oct. 31.

Rockhurst University tennis coach Jamie McDonald wasn’t surprised to hear that the city was considering other uses for the tennis center land.

“They’ve been approached multiple times, so it’s not exactly a shock when that topic comes up,” he said.

He played on those courts as a kid growing up in the Kansas City area, and as a captain a decade ago playing for three state championship teams at Shawnee Mission East High School.

Now at Rockhurst, his men’s and women’s teams practice and play competitions there. Both the size of the complex and its close proximity to Rockhurst are a convenience he wouldn’t want to lose.

“Hopefully those courts will get a facelift,” he said. “We’ll see.”

The courts were new in 1996, when the tennis center was rebuilt at the cost of $1.8 million, which with inflation would equal twice that much today. But by the summer of 2022, cracks had developed, creating tripping hazards.

Worried that the poor condition of the courts might affect UMKC’s ability to host the 2023 Summit League Tennis Championships as planned, Hale wrote a letter to the city asking for improvements because, as a league spokesman told The Star this week, the courts “were not in a condition that would be safe or conducive to hosting a collegiate tennis championship.”

But the parks department’s director of golf services, Doug Schroeder, wrote back to say that “repairing the worst spots is all I can do at this time.” The bid to resurface had come in at nearly $500,000, and there was no money in the budget for that.

And there still isn’t.

“The Parks and Recreation Department is aware of the deferred maintenance issues at the Plaza Tennis Center, along with many of the facilities in the Parks system,” Platt’s press secretary, Sherae Honeycutt, wrote in response to questions The Star had for the parks department. “While we recognize that the courts need repair, they are safe for play.”

Honeycutt said “minor work” was done this year.

UMKC ended up paying a penalty and subsidizing the cost of moving the tournament to Oklahoma. Hale didn’t know how much that amounted to, but of two things he was certain.

“We were the 2 seed, and having the travel and disappointment of not hosting hurt morale,” he said in a text message while on his way to Florida for a recruiting trip this week.

Next year’s tournament is in Des Moines. When Kansas City gets another turn is anyone’s guess.

University of Denver tennis coach Paul Wardlaw thinks it’s a shame the way the tennis courts have fallen into disrepair. He remembers when the tennis center was one of the premiere venues for hosting major tournaments in the Midwest. The last time his team was here to play UMKC, he was sad to see how it had deteriorated.

“It’s kind of like losing a crown jewel,” he said. “Why let it go?”