Tennis center snafu is in County Council’s court

In February 2020, I wrote about a completely unnecessary tennis center planned for Anne Arundel County. This plan had been on the books for a while and some people were publicly clamoring about the “need” for a tennis center.

I wrote at the time: “The problem is why a tennis center was even on the drawing board for Anne Arundel Rec and Parks to start with? What inherently governmental function exists that calls for the county to run a tennis center? How are people who aren’t tennis players helped by this?”

Almost prophetically, the project exploded into a “tennis and sports center” to be built across the street from Millersville Elementary according to the agreement of a lease signed in June between the county and Coppermine, a private company that operates a number of sports facilities across the Baltimore region.

Now I have no issue with Coppermine; it is just trying to do right by its company. I don’t even necessarily oppose the construction of such a sports complex in the county, which is continuing to grow. I have no doubt there is a market for the services that Coppermine proposes to provide.

What I do have a serious problem with is Anne Arundel County getting into the business of building a sport complex for commercial use and subsidizing the project to the tune of $7 million.

The county is basically leasing this land to Coppermine for a period of 50 years. The kicker? The rental cost over the course of the agreement is only $145,920 a year.

That’s it. Over the course of the entirety of the lease, the county will recoup what amounts to a drop in the bucket.

The county intends to construct infrastructure, outdoor courts and all exterior site features within the appropriated budget for the project. And, of course, the county will be taking on the cost of debt service to pay for the $7 million in bonds that will be issued to fund their portion of the project.

So Coppermine is getting what amounts to a sweetheart deal that does not even take into account 50 years of future inflation, while the county spends $7 million to build exterior infrastructure for a private entity when it could be allocating those funds to other parks.

What exactly are we doing here? Private indoor tennis venues in the area have all failed and switched to other uses. Though this project has expanded beyond that scope, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of county executive Steuart Pittman’s priorities, when he believes that taxpayers should be funding this type of endeavor when the private sector has already failed.

What happens if Coppermine’s involvement fails? What if it loses money? What if it goes out of business? Then the county is stuck with an unused albatross that it will either need to maintain or administer at even greater taxpayer expense.

How is this a good use of taxpayer dollars instead of maintaining existing public parks or expanding park access across the county?

On Oct. 18, the County Council likely will vote 4-3 along party lines to approve the lease. All it would take, though, is one Democratic council member to kill this nonsense project.

Hopefully, one will do it.

Brian Griffiths is the publisher of The Duckpin, available for free at TheDuckpin. com, and host of The Duckpin Podcast, available on YouTube and wherever podcasts are available. He can be reached via email at brian.griffiths.media@gmail.com, on Twitter @BrianGriffiths, on TikTok @ briangriffithsmd, on Instagram @briangriffithsmd, or on Facebook at facebook.com/ briangriffithsmd.