Perth Voice Interactive

THE ailing Maylands Tennis Club is lobbying for a $750,000 redevelopment to turn its fortunes around.

The historic 1930s club, located on the peninsula at Clarkson Reserve, has predominantly grass courts and around 80 mostly elderly members.

In 2014 Bayswater city council, stung by an annual maintenance bill of $110,000, voted to cut the number of grass courts from 17 to 11.

Club president John Hogben, in conjunction with Tennis West, is proposing the WA sport department and council both contribute $250,000 towards a new state-of-the-art tennis facility, with nine acrylic hard courts, eight grass courts, two junior “hotshot” courts and new floodlights.

Tennis Australia and Tennis West have committed to provide the remaining $250,000.

“Juniors are the lifeblood of the game and they need to be practising on hard courts, which the majority of tournaments are played on,” Mr Hogben says.

“So we needed to look at having more hard courts to ensure the club has a healthy young membership.

“We also want to make the club more accessible and provide food and tea/coffee vans, because there are limited facilities for parents watching their kids play.”

Over the past decade, spiralling maintenance costs on old buildings and plummeting membership have pressured clubs to merge and become more self-sufficient.

In 2013, then-mayor Terry Kenyon ordered a review of bowling and tennis clubs which lease buildings from the council at subsidised—in some cases negligible—rates.

His successor, Sylvan Albert, says clubs must look at options that make them more economically viable. “It’s early days but I applaud the tennis club for being creative and looking at a solution which would benefit not only them, but the local community,” he says.

The redevelopment motion comes before council this month.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK