Huron fixing Fabens Park's tennis courts

HURON — Crews began their approach to fix up Fabens Park's tennis courts, which includes adding several pickleball playing areas. Late last week, some preliminary tasks began to reconstruct the area within this public space. Talks to revamp the area first began in fall 2022. "It entails ripping out the existing surfaces of the tennis courts, repairing the base, installing brand new tennis court surfaces as well as new striping," Huron city manager Matt Lasko said. "We are also going to do 100% new fencing installed around the tennis courts," he added. "And, although not as worthy but important to the long-term maintenance of the tennis courts, we are going to do new drainage systems around all five courts as well." Through a survey process, conducted in the spring, officials relied on recommendations from community members about new tennis courts. Stu Hamilton, the city's service director, served up some additional points community members should know about based on input received: • The timeline: "We expect the contractor to start deconstruction services this week. We hope this project is concluded by October." • The playing area: "The three-court system will be reconstructed as double-striped tennis/pickleball (courts), while the two-court system will be dedicated for tennis. This will give us a total of five tennis courts with six pickleball courts. There will be no dedicated pickleball courts. The six pickleball (courts will be) double-striped on the three-court system with removable nets." • The basis: "The court configuration was originally planned to be dual-striped on the two-court system, with the three-court system being dedicated to tennis. However, while the bid was out, the city released an online survey to get feedback on what our residents would prefer. The results came back that more residents requested more pickleball, while neither the tennis or pickleball contingent seemed to have a strong preference on dedicated use or dual striping. Dual-striping the two-court system did not achieve this goal, so we pivoted to dual-striping the three-court system to give us additional pickleball." • The cost: The project comes out to about $516,500 broken down with $35,000 for design, $35,000 in inspection costs and $446,500 for construction. This is up from previous estimates of $445,000. • The funding: Huron Township and the Huron Joint Recreation District approved contributions totaling about $140,000 with the balance, about $376,500, coming from local city funds. • The anticipation: "We are extremely excited to finally get to do this project. This has been talked about for a very long time and never came to fruition. The courts have deteriorated fast in the last few years. But with the commitment and leadership from our parks and recreation department and our partnerships with Huron Township and the Huron Joint Recreation Department, we were finally able to make this a reality. We would like to thank our partners, without whom this project would not be possible."