The city-owned tennis courts in Park Rapids’ Depot Park opened Monday, July 24 after a long and eventful project to replace them.

The four city courts, between 3rd and 4th Street East, lie just east of four similar courts owned by the Park Rapids Area Schools, which were not refurbished. However, the school district did replace its eight tennis courts on Helten Avenue last year.

During an opening ceremony for the rebuilt courts, Kathy Peterson with the Park Rapids Tennis Association acknowledged the many private and corporate donors who funded the project and stuck with it through delays due to COVID-19 and soaring construction costs that forced the project to be re-bid.

Peterson also thanked City Administrator Angel Weasner, the latest of four city administrators whose hands touched the project, for helping see it through. Former administrators John McKinney and Ryan Mathisrud and interim administrator Betty Thomsen were also involved.

Following Peterson’s speech, the first ball was volleyed across the net by two of the donors who planted the seed of the project: Dianne Steiner and Amy Cass. Members of the crowd attending the ceremony moved under the Depot Park picnic shelter for punch and rolls, while only minutes later, a couple from Virginia started a match on one of the new concrete courts.

“We did not go to downtown businesses” for donations, said Peterson. “This hit during COVID, and they were hurting. It was like, ‘We’re not going to ask them for dollars now.’”

Instead, she said, besides private donors the project was supported by such corporate sponsors as all three healthcare institutions in town and three of the four banks, as well as the Rotary Club and American Legion Auxiliary.

Peterson described the club’s feelings about the completed courts as “ecstatic.”

“Kudos to them,” she said. “When the first bid that came in that was off the chart, I went to them and said, ‘Here’s what we’re looking at.’”

The first design for the courts called for top-of-the-line, post-tensioned concrete. Peterson said the next option was for saw-cut concrete, at an estimated cost of $650,000.

“It was that or asphalt,” she said. “I sat there at the end of the meeting and asked them, ‘Do you want to put a cap? If we can’t raise whatever it comes to, do we take asphalt? Do we say, just go with asphalt?’ Which, actually, we would have had enough at that point. No one would make a motion. Nobody said a word. The only word said was, ‘We’re going for concrete.’

“They stepped up. We went out and hit a few more donors.”

Peterson said donations ranged between $50 and $50,000. “Every dollar worked,” she said, including a $15,000 grant from the U.S. Tennis Association’s northern district, gifts that Joe Cass raised from two private donors for $10,000 and $25,000, and a $250,000 Land and Water Conservation grant from the Minnesota DNR that Tom Stursa successfully wrote in 2021 after an unsuccessful application in 2020.

“The cooperation in raising funds for this was way beyond my hopes,” said Peterson, adding that no one ever said a hard “no.”

“In the end, counting the grant and the city’s help,” said Peterson, “the actual court bid was $565,000 – which there was no problem (during construction). Everything went on track.”

She voiced optimism that the final cost of the project would come in under that bid amount.

Peterson stressed the longevity of the concrete court replacement. “They’re not going to crack up like asphalt will in 20 years or less,” she said. “The city should not have to maintain them ever, except for general maintenance – potentially repainting them down the line, when the courtlines wear off. But they should not have to replace the whole thing again.

“That was always the goal: for the community, forever.”