Court Lighting Bad News

Friday, 10 January, should have been a day of celebration.

Stage 1 (Courts 1-6) of the Court Lighting Project was scheduled for completion on 10 January with Stage 2 (Courts 7-16 & A) scheduled for completion on 7 February.

Unfortunately, the project is way behind schedule. At 10 January, no work has started.

The new schedule is for work to commence on 4 February with the project to be completed by 3 March.

This delay has severe implications for the Tennis Club’s programs.  At present, there are only 5 fully-lit courts and 3 badly-lit courts open for night play.  There is no information available about whether this number of courts will decrease or increase during the construction period.

Because of the limited number of courts available, entries for the Summer Night Series Tournaments will need to be restricted.  No idea when Thursday Night Social Tennis will restart.  No idea if the late-starting, short season of First Semester Team Fixtures will be able to go ahead.

The court lighting debacle started in March 2022 with the failure of a number of light poles (not fixed for 13 months) and then escalated with the gradual failure of all the LED lights from November 2022 through all of 2023.  This resulted in the Tennis Centre being closed for night programs in December 2023.  Some limited night programs became possible in mid-2024 as some lights were fixed and new lights were installed on Courts 17-20 (10 months behind schedule).  And now it is a waiting game for the new lights to be installed on the other 17 courts.