The Kits Beach Tennis Club can't score any points with the Vancouver Park Board until the municipal bureaucrats test the waters of the club's Kitsilano neighbours.
But some Kits folks — in the kind of way that those comfortable with their privileges don't like to share them — have already come down against changes to the park after"all hell broke loose," according to this very paper. Read about the heated bike path debate of 2013 here and here and here. And don't even think of missing here.
In the recent case of the tennis club, the park board insists on holding a public consultation before granting it a permit to operate. There are already three tennis clubs using public courts in the city, but the park board's sport and wellness supervisor (now there's a title fit for the West Coast) told the club it's time to establish contemporary protocol instead of following the precedent set by the other clubs. Fair enough. The club at Queen Elizabeth Park was created nearly 40 years ago.
I talked to several people for this story (but not ever the sport and wellness supervisor because his schedule meant we couldn't say more than an introduction and play phone tag). One was was Mark Jacobs, a regular at the Kitsilano Beach Park tennis courts who is advocating for the Kits Beach Tennis Club, which we'll now call KBTC and imagine it's a SoCal radio station of endless summer.
Jacobs made his point.
First, his problem:
"We can organize as a non-profit society with the province. But in order to achieve some of the benefits, including to be able to have club nights down at the courts … that requires city recognition. And the city won’t recognize us without public consultation.
"We’ve been told that it must happen and we’ve been told that everyone is too busy for that to happen before October, which makes no sense to me because how hard can it be to have a public consultation?
Second, the reason he believes it's now hard to have a public consultation in Kitsilano:
"They want to make sure they don’t get burned like on the bike path down here.
"We have to recognize that the dynamic at the park board is not always healthy. We have to recognize that the elected members are well intentioned but they are often politicians who are on a stepping stone [to other levels of government] and they are at the mercy of a very well entrenched political bureaucracy that has its own agenda and they got burned on the bike path [in Kitsilano Beach Park]. It has its own limitation, both in terms of budged and competence.
One of the outspoken critics of the bike path was Howard Kelsey whose foundation contributed to the estimated $600,000 cost to refurbish the once-loathed-but-still-popular tennis courts at Kits Beach Park where the club wants to play. He also runs KitsFest, a sports festival at the park with tennis, basketball and beach volleyball tournaments.
The park needs better cycling infrastructure albeit not what was proposed, yet why a sport promoter would stand in the way is beyond me. That's for another time.
Back to the smooth hits of KBTC.
Third, what he thinks the bike path means for the tennis club:
"And ultimately, the blow back comes to the elected members of the park bard and the fiasco of the bike path is a great example. I think the message has been heard loud and clear: no one wants to go through that again. I think the bureaucrats have heard loud and clear from the politicians that nothing is going to happen without public consultation at Kits Beach now — it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be dog walkers wanting permission to breathe while they walk their dogs — it doesn’t matter.
Fourth, he says tennis is tame:
"I’m frustrated because we’d love to get rolling but, on the other hand, I completely understand where it comes from. What we’re offering is so non-controversial that we’ll be through the public consultation process as quickly as the park board can arrange to have it.
"Really what we want to do is have the ability to do what other clubs do, which is rent the courts out in order to have the kinds of events to build community around an excellent public facility.
"It doesn’t get less controversial.
