No Love Lost Over Park’s Tennis Courts

It’s one of the hottest issues, said one longtime San Marino resident, since 1973, when some liberal education activists tried to push a sex education program in the public schools.

This time it’s a plan for a pair of new tennis courts in Lacy Park that has San Marino residents choosing up sides.

The San Marino Tennis Foundation, which manages the existing six courts in the northwest corner of the park, says it urgently needs more space to accommodate dozens of tennis buffs in town. Opponents say the construction proposal, which would require cutting down six trees, is a callous encroachment on public property by a private group.

Lacy Park is serious business in San Marino. It is the focus of the city’s recreational life, the site of its celebrated annual Fourth of July parade and an object of great civic pride.

“Somebody said Lacy Park is like a walk in the mountains,” said Millie Marder, chairwoman of the San Marino Garden Club. “We don’t have to go to the mountains. We have them right in our own backyard.”

Civilized Debate

The face-off in the wealthy community of terra cotta-topped homes and broad lawns is, so far, tense but civilized (unlike the sex-education debate, which had citizens dumping garbage on each other’s lawns).

After a City Council meeting Wednesday night, for example, spokesmen for both sides spilled into the night, rasping contentiously against each other on the steps of City Hall.

Marder, who also heads the Committee to Save Lacy Park, zeroed right in on the tennis proponents.

They were exhibiting a blatant disregard for natural beauty, said Marder, standing toe to toe with Tennis Foundation President Michael Blaylock.

“If the Tennis Foundation has the money to build tennis courts,” she demanded, “why don’t they give our high school beautiful tennis courts rather than pouring more concrete on open park land?”

The Tennis Foundation president stifled his indignation.

“I’m for natural beauty, too,” said Blaylock, whose group already has refurbished 10 tennis courts for the San Marino public schools. “I’m a member of the Sierra Club.”

Passions are running high in San Marino, the fourth-wealthiest community in Los Angeles County. While paying tribute to the fervor that San Marinans exhibit on civic issues, Councilman Paul Crowley nevertheless reminded those attending the meeting that “we’re not talking about an oil refinery, a freeway or a bordello.”

The debate has been going on for months. While the Tennis Foundation has gone through a slow process of public hearings, studies, Planning Commission consideration and, finally, presentation to the City Council, the opposition has been gathering petitions.

Last Wednesday night, Marder submitted petitions bearing 873 signatures of property owners opposed to the new courts to the council .

But the issues seem to go beyond whether, as one resident put it, there should be the “constant bop-bop-bop of tennis balls in the park.”

Violation of Covenant

Opponents say that having a “private club” in the park may be a violation of the covenant under which railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington donated the land to the city.

What’s more, they say, some city councilmen considering the matter should disqualify themselves because they’re members of the Tennis Foundation.

“It’s a conflict of interest,” insisted Marder, who called the extra courts unnecessary.

The Tennis Foundation, which denies that its members are in any way the recipients of special privileges, says it is actually making an improvement on a marginal section of the 27-acre park.

‘Frustrated Souls’

“It’s an emotional issue with some ladies,” said Allan Wolff, vice president of the foundation. “They’re dear souls who are frustrated and excited and they exaggerate a little.”

Lacy Park is a broad, green, sun-splashed meadow surrounded by a variety of lush shade trees. The park was designed 40 years ago by a horticulturist William Hertrich, and it has stood as a model for planners and landscapers ever since.

Up near the northwest corner, behind a stand of shrubs and tree, is a row of tennis courts, with a clubhouse in their midst. One afternoon last week, half a dozen women sat courtside, waiting for their children to finish a tennis lesson. One woman gestured scornfully toward the place, 20 feet away, where the new courts are proposed.

“I won’t let my children run over there,” she said. “It’s an isolated, undeveloped area. I’d just as soon see it developed.”

“It’s certainly a no-green belt.” another woman said.

Sacrificing Trees

It is an out-of-the-way spot, without the luster of the central area of the park. But a group of trees stands there nevertheless. The plan is to lay out the new tennis courts there, cutting down a cotter pine, a deodar, a Christmas berry tree, a strawberry tree and a pair of floss silk trees with vivid pink blossoms.

The foundation would foot the bill for the courts and replace a row of sheds used by the Boy Scouts to store camping equipment. The loss to the park would be 25,600 square feet, according to an environmental impact statement.

“In the past five years, our membership has gone from 200 families to 244,” said Wolff. “That’s put a lot of pressure on us.” On Saturday mornings now, he said, crowds waiting for men’s doubles often jam the waiting area. Children come by the dozens after school, and non-working women vie for the other times.

Tennis Foundation members listen in pain to descriptions of their organization as a “private club.”

‘No Special Privileges’

“There are no special privileges involved,” said Blaylock, a tax lawyer.

According to foundation officials, anyone who resides in the San Marino Unified School District (which includes parts of Pasadena and San Gabriel) can join for a $550 initiation fee. Others, whether they live in San Marino or not, can get onto the courts by paying a fee, $4 for a San Marino resident, $5 for others.

The foundation maintains its six courts without cost to the city, Wolff added.

Another sore point is critics’ claims that tennis players are municipally pampered because the courts are open on weekends while the rest of the park is closed.

“The courts are kept open only because we maintain them and keep people out of the rest of the park,” said Blaylock.

Prohibitive Cost

The city has said that it would cost $130,000 a year in public funds to open the rest of the park on weekends.

But the tennis court opponents stick to their guns.

“There’s an initiation fee, isn’t there?” Marder said. “That makes it a private club.”

The secret weapon of the Committee to Save Lacy Park is a pair of San Marino patriarchs: 92-year-old Maud Dobson, a founding member of the San Marino Garden Club, and Edwards H. Metcalf, grandson of Henry E. Huntington.

Dobson, a fragile-looking, white-haired woman, suggests that the Tennis Foundation got into the park in the first place by using devious means.

‘No One Was Alert’

“It was one summer when people were gone and no one was alert,” she said ruminatively. “With no publicity, the Tennis Foundation asked for land in Lacy Park and the City Council let them build six courts. These people depend on smooth diplomacy and as little publicity as possible.”

Dobson sees the issue in terms of protecting the park from “being eroded by special interests”

“Hobbies change from year to year,” she said. “Right now, tennis is in ascendancy. It’s a passing thing. The things of the park are eternal.”

Metcalf was equally vehement.

“I’m very disturbed because I feel the land was given to the city for use by its citizens as a park and a botanical garden,” he said. “Frankly, I’m looking at the original deed to see if the whole idea of tennis courts isn’t a violation of restrictions” governing usage of the parks.

No Conflict of Interest

The council sought to reassure the audience at the Wednesday meeting that, though four of its five members also belong to the Tennis Foundation, there is no conflict of interest.

“I think the burden of proof has swung completely to the proponents of the tennis courts,” Councilman Crowley said. “We’re going to have to go to extremes to make sure that things are done in an upright way.”

Then, the council voted to table the matter at least until January.