Palm Coast Council Isn’t Thrilled by USTA Florida’s Approach Shot to Taking Over Southern Rec Center Management

The Palm Coast City Council is not ready to hand over the Southern Recreation Center, newest of the city’s many jewels crowning its parks and recreation provinces, to USTA Florida for management over the next six years.  

The city will keep talking with USTA. But the council isn’t thrilled by the cost-benefit analysis of the proposed contract, finding it too much of a one-sided benefit to USTA while the city would still lose money at the center, as it does now, only it would also lose control. (“It’s supposed to be beneficial for both, not just for one party over the other,” Tony Amaral told the council.) 

The contract’s vagueness about USTA’s responsibilities compared to the city’s raised questions. And the council worried about the respect USTA would show the Rec Center’s 12 pickleball courts and operations. 

“I’m hesitant to make any big changes like this right now,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said. “The Southern Rec Center, has only been fully operating for about a year and a half, so we really haven’t had an opportunity to really see how it’s going to perform.” Pontieri is concerned about “fixing something that’s not really broken right now.” 

“All of us field lots of concerns and complaints from our residents daily. I’ll tell you, the Southern Rec Center isn’t one of them,” Pontieri said. “I consistently hear how well the Southern Rec Center is doing.” 

Agnes Lightfoot, the dean of the city’s Friends of Tennis, said the Rec Center is working very well as it is, but cautioned the council to maintain the courts, develop a youth program and pay attention to pickleball. “We could grow the southern Recreation Center just throughout pickleball. Look at the numbers. They’re already there,” Lightfoot said. 

A $700,000 USTA Florida grant helped build additional tennis courts at the Rec Center that opened for play in January. In exchange, the USTA was to be given the chance to pitch a proposal to manage the whole facility. Laura Bowen, executive director of USTAS Florida, did so with an overview in December, and a more detailed proposal before the City Council on Tuesday. 

USTA surveyed local residents. It got only 119 responses, not generally the sort of sample that commands much authority. Three-fourths were passholders at the Rec Center, most of them playing several times a week there. The survey showed they liked current prices, they favor easy registrations or reservations, they want more pro events. If USTA were to take over, they worry about pickleball being ignored, staff being cut and maintenance suffering. 

USTA Florida is proposing a list of programs, from open play to classes to team tennis and other events. It would provide “at least five additional instructors” and three dedicated maintenance staff, plus an event and tournament coordinator. 

Its six-year contract, starting in January, projects saving the city $400,000 a year by providing all staffing and instruction. It would take all the revenue generated by the facility but for the food concession and some city programs. The city would continue to be responsible for all maintenance, repairs, cleaning, storm preparation, landscaping and so on. 

The proposal was short on further financial details. 

The Rec Center has generated $380,000 in revenue to date, more than half from pickleball activities, over $60,000 of it from tennis activities, and from several other sources, according to James Hirst, the city’s parks and recreation director. If the USTA were to take over, it would take all but about $15,000 of the revenue, those dollars generated by the city’s own recreation programs. 

“There’s a focus, at least in the presentation from USTA on expenditures and reducing our expenditures,” Council member Ty Miller said. “But part of the equation is our revenues. So if we lose all of our revenues, and we save a couple of hundred grand in expenditures, net, we’re losing money here if we do this.”

USTA tells the city it would save the city $400,000. But it’s cost $625,000 to operate the center so far, bringing annual operational costs to roughly $700,000. The facility is expecting a loss of $207,000 this year. Even with USTA taking over, “we’re going to lose more,” Miller said. That’s his hold-up. “Financially, it looks like, while there may be positives in terms of programming, economic impact for events, we don’t have those. That’s not defined.”

Pontieri had other concerns. The USTA contract language is vague on what it would take for the city to end its relationship with USTA if matters soured. She’s uncomfortable with USTA completely taking over the Southern Rec Center’s social media messaging (never a weak point in Palm Coast’s cheery communications world), or how it would still be the city’s responsibility–and cost–to resurface the clay courts quarterly, among other costs. 

“We have to consider the fact that we’re not being alleviated of all of the maintenance expenses,” Pontieri said. Nor has the USTA provided comparative figures from the four facilities it runs in other cities. Pontieri has asked for that data. 

Then there’s pickleball. “We have doubled the amount of revenue for pickleball than we do tennis,” Pontieri said. “So my concern is, will we see the same attention being given to pickleball, if not more than what is given to tennis?” Will USTA, whose acronym stands for United States Tennis Association, invest in pickleball as much as or more than it would in tennis? Would it bring the pickleball tournaments the Rec Center is built for? All those questions would have to be answered before moving toward a contract with USTA. 

The USTA is not averse to change: it was once known as the United States Lawn Tennis Association. It dropped the Lawn when the sport was democratized and lawn tennis relegated to Wimbledon and a few musty mansions’ backyards in Newport, R.I. But while the United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA) last year changed its name to the Racket Sport Professional Association in recognition of pickleball’s blitz, the USTA is resisting that change for now. 

To Council member Dave Sullivan, the city invested $8 million into the Southern Rec Center. It’s just getting started and “working pretty well,” and it’s too early to make changes to management, he said. 

Council member Charles Gambaro has been focused on the balance sheet. He pressed the city to explore selling the Palm Harbor Golf Club for the same reason. He was not successful. “We made a big point during the golf course discussion that cost recovery is important to this council,” he said. “Are we going to be fair and consistent with cost recovery across the board with our parks and recreation? Yes or no.”

The Parks and Recreation Department isn’t functioning to make money, or even to break even. It is by nature a money-losing operation. It is funded with tax dollars to operate parks and recreation programs, the overwhelming majority of which are free, as a service provided in return for taxpayers’ dollars. 

The difference with the Southern Recreation Center is that it is fee-based–but fee-based for a service not as widely available elsewhere. There are a few scattered free tennis and pickleball courts in the city and the county, but there are no free clay courts, which Palm Coast’s older players favor, since they are much less damaging to knees and other joints. 

There are golf courses other than Palm Harbor Golf Course. There aren’t free trails and places like the Southern Recreation Center, Miller said. “There’s no other alternative for the residents in terms of these types of activities,” Miller said, “and that goes into also the parks and trails and things like that that only government can provide, because no private entity is creating a trail and letting people walk on it for free.”

Still: Even Gambaro was not eager to sign on to the USTA contract on the dearth of information before the council. “I just don’t think we have enough information to make a decision,” he said. “It’s worth going down the road of finding out that information so we could figure out what the best way forward is.”

Members of the public like Michael Flanagan, a local resident and tennis player, underscored the fact that “unlike a private tennis area, where they have to fund their own expenditures, we’re part of what’s called Park and Recreation.” He was unimpressed with the USTA proposal’s “nebulous” numbers and lack of a clear business plan. “Any business plan should have something that shows here’s what we expect, here’s what we’d like to get to,” he said. 

Pickleball players implored the council to be aware of the sport’s impact at the center and in the county. Some tennis players called for the USTA to come in and “offer more tournaments” and run the center. “You call up to the center. Now nobody knows what’s going on,” the player said. 

Public perspectives did not change the council’s perspective in this case. “I see the potential on both sides, but I also see the risk,” Pontieri said. “And without knowing those real figures, I don’t think it’s prudent on us to make a decision based on what’s in front of us at the moment.” The center is “just getting off the ground,  and there’s a lot of revenue to be had.” 

Meanwhile, Pontieri doesn’t want the USTA to be deterred from organizing tournaments at the Rec Center. It was a subtle way to call on the organization not to be retaliatory and blacklist Palm Coast from its baselines. 

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