The provision of tennis courts in Bath’s Sydney Gardens came up for discussion this week at a stakeholder session held to discuss plans for this historic park’s future.
Paul Pearce, who is the Parks Projects Manager for B&NES, told Bath Newseum.
“It was a good stakeholder drop-in session yesterday. We received a lot of feedback from users that the tennis courts in Sydney Gardens are in much demand and we were urged by a number of people to retain the bottom tennis courts in the new masterplan for the site.
The latest iteration for the masterplan was based on an earlier public consultation held on 2nd June where we received feedback that users of the park wanted to see a wider range of activities for older children and teenagers.
With this in mind, the latest design includes a multi-use ball game area within the footprint of the current bottom courts – creating space where a wide range of informal and other ball games can be played- such as basketball, football, volleyball and table tennis. Ultimately this would provide a more flexible space for a wider range of different types of active play than can currently be accommodated by six permanent tennis courts.
The design also includes provision for the refurbishment of the top tennis courts which would ensure continued provision of tennis in the park. We had floated the idea that the upper courts could also be used as a flexible space outside of the tennis season too – by taking the nets down during the winter- but feedback from tennis players suggests that people want to play tennis there all year round; and so that idea will be shelved.
Our design team will be collating all of the consensus check forms that we’ve received in the coming days and we’ll be considering all feedback in the final design.
If successful at the first round of the Parks For People application, there will be scope for considerably more consultation and development work in 2017 and early 2018 – leading up to the development of a final, more detailed design and activity plan for stage 2 .”
