FYI........
It will cost tennis players at the Gates Tennis Center a bit more to use the courts. A fee increase was one of the items addressed by the Mayor and Council at a short meeting this week.
The increase raised fees for singles court time$1 to a $6 fee. For prime time doubles, the charge will be $8. Private lessons are currently $45 and the new structure creates a range of $35 to $95, but most lessons will be in the $45-$50 range. Councilman Brown asked if the increases had been publicized and if people would be unable to play because of the higher fees.
“I don’t think so. The Gates Tennis Center hasn’t increased fees since 2003 and they have literally put millions of dollars in to it since that point. It’s really truly a state of the art tennis facility. And even with this increase it’s well beneath similarly situated facilities throughout the country. So I don’t think there will be much of a push-back on that. They wanted to do signage going up this afternoon.”
- Kelly Marlin
Personnel Analyst
Parks & Recreation
Scholarships are still available for those who need them, and the children’s programs at the center are not affected by the increases. Mayor Hickenlooper commented on the great job the Gates Foundation has done cleaning up the area.
“There used to be a dump underneath those tennis courts. And so they’ve gone and taken all the dump…that’s why almost all the main courts kind of had this bulge, they were all cracked, and it was, for high quality tennis, it was not our finest hour. And so they went back and took out all the, excavated, took out…Gates Foundation has put in a couple million bucks. And then we raised another, I’m not sure what the total amount of fund raising was, but it’s huge.”
- John Hickenlooper
Mayor
City of Denver
