Believe it or not, the tournament support staff really did have a good time joking with and about Steffi. This article also sheds light on the "ugly side" of "progress." Longtime residents forced to relocate for a tournament that will be extinct by 1996.
NEW DELRAY TENNIS CENTER OFFERS RESIDENTS DIFFERENT POINTS TO VIEW
The Palm Beach Post
Sunday, February 28, 1993
MARY JANE FINE, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The spiffy new Delray Beach Tennis Center defies simple description. Not for lack of superlatives-- it almost instantly lobs the city into the ranks of America's top-seeded tennis towns-- but rather because every observer has a different view.
So, the new home of the Virginia Slims tennis tournament is an image- enhancer for the city, a painful memory for ousted residents, a business opportunity for area merchants, a looming threat to nearby homesteaders, a point of pride for its construction crew or the world's biggest night light, depending on who's talking.
Not so long ago, it was inarguably a they-said-it-couldn't-be-done construction feat that lagged weeks behind schedule. By Saturday, however, workers were washing windows, posting numbers on the stadium seats and making last-minute electrical hookups. Shower curtains for the women's locker room were among the few missing amenities.
"Basically, cosmetics," said Gary Pedullo of Allied Building Contractors, whose crew was touching up paint on the clubhouse.
And, as the days dwindled down to a precious few, tournament director Sharon O'Connor popped a couple of decongestant tablets with her iced tea and bantered with a guy named Nick, who was lugging boxes from one side of her temporary office to the other.
Steffi Graf wouldn't require arranged transportation, O'Connor had just finished saying, because Graf lives in Boca Raton and has "a nice little Porsche that she drives around."
"Did you give her my phone number?" Nick asked.
"Yeah, sure," O'Connor said, grinning. "I'll do that."
Battling a cold and buried in details-- yes, decorative geraniums over potted mums, since the sun will wilt the latter-- O'Connor took it all in stride. Even as a kid, she was unflappable.
"My parents always said things could be total bedlam, and I'd be sitting there in my own little world," she said.
Well, things have been total bedlam in these countdown days, and O'Connor's own little world included every conceivable aspect of the highly regarded women's tennis tournament.
Details, details, details. From sending a limo to pick up Arantxa Sanchez Vicario at the airport to coordinating the tournament sound system, from ordering the telephones to overseeing the health-conscious players' menu (short on red meat, long on whole-grain bread)-- O'Connor was in charge.
She never joined the hand-wringers who fretted that the job couldn't make deadline.
"When the city sets its mind to it, it can really get things done," she said. "Unlike my kitchen at home that my husband's been renovating for three months."
RUSH JOB MEANT 14- TO 16-HOUR DAYS
The sign in Pat Duffy's trailer said it all: "Shall I Rush Your Rush Job Before I Rush the Rush Job I Was Rushing When You Rushed In?"
For Duffy, construction project supervisor, the Tennis Center came as a birthday present of sorts. On Dec. 11, the day he turned 37, he was en route home from a hurricane restoration job in Miami when his truck phone rang. He reported to Delray Beach the next day.
He worked 14- to 16-hour days, coordinated nearly four dozen subcontractors who worked well into the night and refused to slack off even in foul weather.
"The guys had raincoats on, and they were up to their knees in mud," he says. "The policy has been, don't stop; just get here and figure a way to get it done."
Despite the pace, Duffy always found time for his father -- an amputee and former construction worker -- to test the center's access and facilities for the disabled.
From the moment construction began in October, the job left no room for flexibility: the Slims tournament begins March 1, and that was that.
"We've worked the impossible here," says South Africa-born architect Digby Bridges.
Meeting deadlines can be a tricky proposition. Notorious on the tennis circuit is the saga of New Haven, Conn., where center court collapsed during a recent Volvo men's tennis tournament. At fault: Insufficient drying time for layer after layer of new court surface. Workers redid the job as the rotor blades of a hovering helicopter whooshed it dry.
Back in 1936 -- when Atlantic Avenue was a dirt road and you needed a ferry to cross the Intracoastal Waterway-- Delray Beach acquired its original tennis center. Two courts and a log-cabin clubhouse, nestled amid the pineapple groves.
By the time it closed, on Sept. 9, the courts were dry and powdery, the night lights were shot and they'd condemned the viewing roof of the pro shop for safety reasons.
"The place was just falling down around us," says Ed Foster, tennis pro for 23-plus years.
Persistent rumors of a new center kept the city from spending money on the old one, so "we were just ecstatic" when rumor became plan and plan became reality, Foster says.
The new and much-ballyhooed $2.5 million Tennis Center boasts a Key West- style clubhouse painted lime-sherbet green, a sophisticated underground water system to maintain 13 of the 19 courts, a stadium that seats 5,000 spectators (8,000 for tournaments) and a computer-equipped pro shop to keep up with mailings and membership.
"Historically, Delray Beach has always been known as a tennis community, and we kind of lost that," says parks director Joe Weldon. "I think this is going to put us back on the map in tennis circles."
No one knows just how many times the words Delray Beach will enter the public consciousness via newspaper, television and radio coverage of the Slims tournament, but it's the kind of publicity that turns other tourist cities green with dollar-bill envy. Getting to this point involved ousting three residents whose property got swallowed up by the expanded tennis facility.
"I think the people realized it was best for Delray," says architect Bridges. "The city took good care of them. They worked out something amicable."
Linda Collins, who lives on Northwest Third Avenue -- the Center's western boundary -- hesitates a long time before offering her carefully considered opinion of the altered landscape.
"I think it's going to benefit the city," says Collins, 28, "but it's cost a lot of people a lot of heartache."
From the doorway of her small frame house, Collins points across the street to the place where Laura Noble's house once stood. Temporary bleachers occupy the spot.
The city paid off the owners, razed three houses and watched them move to other parts of town.
One of them, Lizzie Bonds, 55, didn't want to discuss the matter. "It's just too painful," she said. Laura Nobles, 72, still refuses to drive past the site where she lived for 41 years. And Collins recalls the day that 89-year-old Roberta Garland left.
"She was crying," Collins says. "It was her birthday, and she had been in that same house -- raised her kids and her grandkids in that same house -- since World War II."
Collins fears a similar fate. Her 7-year-old son's bus stop was recently moved three blocks north, from just past his house to a neighborhood she describes as unsafe. School officials told her that the bus interfered with construction equipment using Third Avenue. Collins now walks her son to the new, temporary location and waits with him until the bus comes.
"I have to get up a little earlier, get to work a little later," says Collins, a private-duty nurse. "It's an imposition."
Even more alarming, she says, are the city inspectors who have come around urging homeowners to paint their houses and spruce up their yards. It is the first time in 10 years, Collins says, that code enforcement officers have been interested in her street. "I figure in another two, three months, we'll be gone, too," she says. "They need a parking area."
"We are trying to put our best foot forward for the tournament," says City Manager David Harden, who maintains that the city has no plans to raze additional houses, "but to say that (code enforcement) is only for the tournament would be incorrect. We want the city to look good, and we're very pleased with the cooperation we've gotten from homeowners."
Up and down Atlantic Avenue, merchants eagerly await the arrival of between 70,000 and 100,000 potential customers -- tennis fans who, presumably, will want or need something other than tennis during the week.
"The spillover can do nothing but enhance business in the community," says parks director Weldon.
The Green Owl restaurant, about four blocks east of the center, normally shuts its doors at 3 p.m., but during tournament week, says counterman Michael Gensman, "We'll stay open as long as we're busy."
The new owner of the Merle Norman Studio will be offering special prices on manicures and pedicures.
Belinda Linton -- who bought Merle Norman just three weeks ago -- needs no convincing. She saw it happen on Key Biscayne, she says, when she was a volunteer for the Lipton tennis tournament. Tennis fans rented local cars, slept in local hotels, ate at local restaurants, patronized local shops.
"It was great," she said. "I hope it does the same thing for us here."
GOOD FOR BUSINESS, NOT HOMEOWNER
File the names Clay Wideman and Charles Broadnax in the You-win-some, You-lose-some category.
Broadnax is a homeowner, whose pretty pastel-trimmed white house lies just east of the tennis center -- and its sunshine-bright night lights.
"It's just like daylight from 5 in the afternoon till 6 the next morning," says Broadnax, whose house is on the market after 32 years. "I think it's time to move now."
Wideman is a president of the Delray Beach Merchants' Association and a businessman, whose His & Hers Hair Creations sits diagonally across Atlantic Avenue from the tennis center.
"We're already getting calls from people wanting their hair done for the tournament," he says. "We're just excited to be, geographically, a block away. We're neighbors."
Last week, Wideman called Slims director O'Connor to apologize for the fact that renovations to his shop -- including a clock tower atop it -- would not be ready in time for the tournament. "She said, `Clay, what are you worried about? We have a contract for 20 years."
GETTING AROUND SLIMS TRAFFIC JAMS
Delray Beach residents will have to contend with traffic and detours during the Virginia Slims, but city officials hope their parking and shuttle plan will reduce problems.
Beginning Monday, traffic around City Hall will be rerouted to decrease congestion at the Tennis Center's main entrance:
* Northwest First Avenue will be closed from Atlantic Avenue north to Northwest First Street.
* Northwest First Street between Swinton Avenue and City Hall will be open only to eastbound traffic during the tournament.
* East Atlantic Avenue will also be closed to eastbound traffic at Swinton Avenue.
To get to City Hall, take Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Northwest First Avenue and go south to City Hall. Park in the north parking lot.
For the tournament, the city will provide parking and security for more than 3,000 cars. Under a contract with the tournament promoter, the city must provide 750 reserved spots and 2,250 for general admission guests.
Nine lots near the tennis center will be open for staff, volunteers, the media, box-ticket holders and disabled guests who have special tickets.
Parking for everyone else will be provided at Lake Ida Park and, when that is full, at Congress Park, an office complex on Congress Avenue. Those who use those lots will pay $3 to help pay for buses to shuttle guests to and from the stadium every 15 minutes, Traffic Engineer Greg Luttrell said.
While city officials realize residents will probably open their property to spectators, Luttrell recommends parking in city-designated lots, which will be lighted and patrolled.
Tennis fans will also be able to park downtown. The two-hour time limit will be lifted for spaces on side streets, but it will stand for the spaces along Atlantic Avenue.
Beginning Wednesday, the Downtown Joint Venture will provide trolley service to downtown parking lots and businesses and the beach. They will run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. On the final day of the tournament, they will start at 10 a.m. and end at 7 p.m.
A purple trolley will carry fans to downtown parking areas. A turquoise one will shuttle them from the tennis center to the beach, making several stops on or near East Atlantic Avenue.
-- CINDY ZETTS
