VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT. WAKE UP USTA.

Written by: Staff on 4th September 2014

VANTAGE POINT BY EUGENE L. SCOTT. WAKE UP USTA. |

Editors Note : Funny our transcriber helpers timing pulling this one out of the vault. Isn’t that where one keeps the “gems” ? This one is from 1992. How ironic on the day the announcement was made for this new project …… Next thing we might hear is Mickey would make a good president.? We’ve already had a few goofys……

The following was published in the Feb. 6, 1992, edition of Tennis Week Magazine as a “Vantage Point” column and written by former Tennis Week founder and publisher Eugene L. Scott:

Reaction to U.S. Tennis Association decisions over the years has ranged from yawning to fawning. Not surprising. The Association is, after all, an organization of stout volunteers whose mission is ministration not innovation. Let others seek headlines and promote and be inventive. The USTA’s role is to serve. In other words, if the USTA were to seek an “official” car, it would be something between a station wagon and a band wagon.

In the face of that function to nurture and comfort, the USTA has undertaken the most ambitious project of its existence, one that in the short term could cause more discomfort than comfort. The project is the proposed new US Open Stadium complex at Flushing Meadow. Long range, the fate of the venture will determine the fate of the USTA.

Timing for the enterprise is ambiguous. On one hand, financial terms for the $100 million bond issue to be floated by Bear Stearns could hardly be more favorable. Interest rates are the lowest they have been in nearly 20 years and the deal will certainly have more romance for portfolios than a public highway or sewer financing.

On the other hand, it is not only slanty-eyed Cassandras who carp that New York City is being dismembered socially and economically. Judgment Day is near. Last Sunday’s N.Y. Times pointed to the city’s latest calamities. The fact that Chapter 11 bankruptcies have claimed Macy’s and 47th Street Photo as recent victims surprises no one.

More alarming is the fact that two of the three networks lost money in 1991. CBS, the host broadcaster for the US Open, may have lost as much as $400 million. NBC, which televises Wimbledon, will report a deficit between $50 and $60 million. ABC, which carries the Virginia Slims Championships, shines the lonely beacon of profit at $100 million, but stands last in overall audience ratings further flustering industry forecasters.

To date, the new stadium plans have been parked in the shadows of bureaucratic delay. Several streaks of light have managed to peak through the municipal paper chase but they have been controlled public relations outings rather than forums for debate. New York City Mayor David Dinkins hosted a pleasant media morning last February when the architect’s models and renderings were first publicly displayed. Later in September, the USTA officially unfolded updated drawings and financing strategy to its membership.

A few weeks ago, a memorandum of agreement between the City and the USTA was signed which means the parties can start to negotiate a lease. At the same time, the Uniform Land Review has begun to ensure that in the process of appropriating park land that New York treats all its citizens as fairly as it treats its tennis citizens.

One positive sign is that the vocal park groups challenging “confiscation” of public property for private purpose have temporarily lost their voice. They had planned a protest rally last fall during the US Open’s Super Saturday. Less than a dozen sympathizers showed up. Further mitigating against protestors picking up momentum is the cost of litigation. It is unlikely this particular group of parkers could assemble a war chest to fight a project that will offer New York more jobs and an improved facility (used by the USTA less than a month out of every year).

That is the good news. There really is no bad news. Not yet. Only the nervous heart flutter that accompanies every dream as it is dressed down to reality. The USTA couldn’t have picked a more treacherous assignment-facing the toughest unions on earth in a park land-fill where earth alone is difficult to identify. And should we mention the worldwide recession blowing in the face of the tennis community’s optimism-making an ostrich seem open-minded by comparison? The three horrors for any building project are deadlines, designs and dollars. They are particularly tricky for the USTA because the stakes are so high. Mistakes will be public and permanent. The stadium’s cost, completion date and design are the tails of three donkeys waiting to be pinned. One accepts there will be slip-ups. One prays they don’t become botch-ups.

Some early concerns. The blue-prints anticipate a total crowd for two weeks of less than 600,000. Isn’t this thinking too small? Where is the room for growth? The US Open does not have to market itself today because the tournament is so popular. Selling the Open is simply taking orders for tickets. A lot of tickets. Fourteen days of matches are a virtual sellout with attendance last September of 515,921. Where is the allowance in the plans to develop a new spectator base? If the complex has a hope of being relevant for 25 years, shouldn’t the architects envision accommodating a million (or more)?

The models and drawings don’t project a feeling of space and openness even for this year’s flock of fans. Besides, no strategy has yet been developed to solve the crowd crunch during the overlapping day and night matches. Adding to the sense of congestion is the decision not to use for public viewing the acreage on which the Open is currently staged. Consideration was briefly given to refurbishing the existing stadium and building a new stadium on the adjacent giant grass circle. The intended result was for two substantial arenas to be built at a cheaper price than starting from scratch. The idea was torpedoed when the grotty state of the existing stadium was exposed. This doesn’t explain why consideration hasn’t been given to opening up the whole area to the public so that multiple courts could sprawl lazily over the entire 46 acres. The Masters golf tournament is spread over 200 acres. The galleries cherish the experience of strolling down long stretches of fairway just to watch a few shots from a handful of golfers.

This writer does have one minor cavil about the architects Rossetti Associates. I don’t have a problem with Rossetti learning on the job during its first tennis facility construction. The company has, after all, fashioned one of the country’s most modern domes (pretentiously tagged the Palace of Auburn Hills), home to the Detroit Pistons. It has never attempted a tennis stadium before. Few firms have. Rossetti’s team has visited all the Grand Slam sites more than once to gather information to help its New York task. I worry if they know enough about our sport to ask the cozier questions. Why, for instance, does the distance between the doubles tram line and the first spectator seat vary at Flinders Park and Flushing Meadow by over 30 feet? Or why do the courtside boxes at Flushing have six seats, rather than two, four or eight? A lifetime subscription to Tennis Week if they get both answers right (a free box at the Open if they don’t?).

Another thing. Not a single sack of concrete has been mixed and Rossetti is already claiming sophisticated expertise in tennis stadium construction. The major tournament directors around the world were solicited last November by Rossetti for its consulting business via a snappy brochure proudly displaying the four color renderings of the proposed new US Open Tennis Center. The mailing had the timing of a foot fault.

The cost of the project was estimated last September at $125 million, with another $25 million available for contingencies. In November, the estimate ballooned to over $200 million and Rossetti was asked to scale back the design to $150 million. Not a salubrious start.

No one has chatted much about cost overruns and the foggy bottom of dealing with New York City unions. Particularly local #3, the electrician’s union. What if construction starts, the price tag reaches $150 million and the stadium isn’t finished? Can the language of the contract sort out every contingency? No agreement drafted in the history of jurisprudence has yet. Maybe this one will be the first.

Fortunately, there is the example of New York City’s mightiest sports complex. Madison Square Garden announced in 1989 that it was going to restore the Garden by 1991 at a cost of $200 million. That’s exactly what happened. However, just as Madison Square is not a garden, neither is Flushing a meadow. Other comparisons may not be so close.

Topics: Eugene L. Scott, Tennis, Tennis News, Tennis Week Magazine, Usta, Vantage Point

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10sBalls_com says:

September 4, 2014 at 7:07 pm

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