Alarge tennis facility is slated to hold court on Perrineville Road near Route 33 in Monroe Township following a unanimous approval by the Monroe Planning Board on June 26.
“From the standpoint of where it’s located, I think it’s an ideal location,” Mayor Richard Pucci said. “That’s going to be the area of our future build-out.”
The facility, which will sit about 1,000 feet from Route 33, on the east side of Perrineville Road, will be home to indoor and outdoor courts. The location in Monroe Township is about 2 miles from the Manalapan border.
According to Township Engineer Ernie Feist, the indoor portion will comprise 78,100 square feet and contain eight tennis and two basketball courts. Four outdoor tennis courts will span another 27,500 square feet.
An air-supported fabric structure will allow the outdoor courts to be used yearround, Feist said. During colder months, the structure will act as a bubble to protect players from the elements. It will be removed during warmer months.
Between 20 and 25 senior citizens from various Monroe tennis organizations showed up at the Planning Board meeting to offer input on the application, Feist said.
“They were there to show their support and encourage the board to approve it,” Feist said. “They were very much in favor of seeing this built, so they wouldn’t have to travel to East Brunswick.”
There is currently no indoor tennis facility in Monroe, Feist said, so the residents often used one in East Brunswick during the winter.
Pucci said the tennis-playing seniors also pushed for courts to be surfaced with a clay material called Har Tru, which they said reduces injuries and lessens joint stress. The applicant, Monroe 33 Tennis, Basketball and Sports Center LLC, agreed to surface the four outdoor courts with Har-Tru.
Feist said the developer is projecting that the tennis facility will be completed by fall 2009, but it is not known when construction will begin.
The tennis project took the place of past efforts to build an ice skating rink at the Perrineville Road site. Though that project gained approval from the Planning Board, the builders abandoned it before construction began.
“The new application came in using the old plans with some modifications,” Feist said.
Pucci expressed pleasure with the private venture. He said tennis courts are a nice amenity to have for residents, but are often hard for municipalities to provide due to varying levels of support for such projects.
He pointed out that while there is a large constituency of senior citizens with a love for the game, it is also likely that younger residents will take advantage of the new courts once they are built.
“If the facility is available to them, I think more of them will move toward using the facility,” Pucci said.