TENNIS / DANA HADDAD : Warner Bounces Back Yet Again

The Warner Center tennis club is far from being the nicest facility in the Valley--as it once perhaps was--but it might be the area’s most resilient.

The club twice has been felled by capricious circumstances and twice it has bounced back.

It was once a posh, ground-level country club, the Mecca of tennis in the Valley until a developer destroyed it in the early 1980s. The property on Canoga Avenue near Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills was too valuable, he discovered.

Up went a Hilton Hotel, a high-rise office building, a restaurant, a fitness center and a seven-story parking structure, on top of which was a new Warner Center Club.

It was a bare-bones facility lacking all charm with a semi-obstructed view of the often-smoggy Valley. Most of the members grudgingly stayed, but for the next 10 years they often displayed bitterness. Nonetheless, the courts were packed.

Then, in 1994, came the Northridge earthquake, which disabled the main parking-garage elevator and forced temporary closure of the rooftop club.

When it reopened, with one big crack in the concrete, members had to climb two flights of stairs.

“There was nothing here,” said Randy Berg, Warner’s tennis director. “It was dead.”

Before the earthquake, Warner had different problems.

“Saturday and Sunday mornings it was packed up here,” Berg said. “We had people waiting in line.”

Berg estimates 260 of the roughly 360 members quit, most of them fleeing to the once-dilapidated Calabasas Park Tennis Club, which was being renovated by the City of Calabasas.

Two years ago, Calabasas dedicated itself to building a strong youth program, which has attracted most of the Valley’s top juniors. At Warner, Berg said, teen-agers would have a difficult time getting their bikes to the top of the garage.

“We can’t compete with Calabasas in juniors and the social atmosphere,” Berg said.

But nearly 18 months after its dubious post-quake reopening, Warner is healthy again. Warner has 490 tennis members, Berg said, 160 of whom are active.

“The earthquake hurt this club, but it helped it, too,” Berg said. “We’ve got a different clientele here.”

For three months, however, Berg was one of Warner’s many disgruntled expatriates. A five-year pro at the center, he resigned in November after the new owner, L.A. Fitness, refused to uphold his earlier promotion to tennis director.

“Since 1989, I had worked for five different directors,” Berg said. “I ran all the programs. These guys would say, ‘Keep everything going,’ and they got all the money. It was deflating.”

Berg, 38, went to work with a club member in the shipping-and-receiving department of a computer software company.

But by February, L.A. Fitness executives, with no experience running a tennis facility, contacted Berg and asked him to come back as director. He did so in April. Since then, membership has continued to rise.

Under previous ownership, Warner could not compete with the likes of Calabasas, which now overflows with players on weekends because of its affordable membership rates.

Warner members who paid $995 and $1,125 initiation fees for single or family memberships, along with monthly dues of $95 and $125, could go to Calabasas and pay $40 and $60 in dues with no start-up costs.

Under Warner’s new competitive monthly rates, families now pay $69 and singles $59 for tennis and membership in the adjoining health club. Initiation fees are now between $100-200. Calabasas recently raised it rates to $70 for families and $50 for singles with no initiation fee.

So, Warner has a new lease on life, and a new clubhouse to boot, and membership soon will hit the 500 plateau.

*

Erin Boisclair continues to knock on the door of a national championship. Boisclair, 15, of Agoura Hills, finished second last week in the United States Tennis Assn. National Clay Court championships in Memphis, Tenn.

She could have won the 18-and-under singles division, Coach Alan Ma said, had she served better and won a few key points in a 6-1, 6-1 loss in the final to Lilia Osterloh of Canal Winchester, Ohio.

“She could have easily won the first set,” Ma said of Boisclair, who converted only one of six game points in the first set and only two of nine in the match. “It was not a well-played match for both players. Both were under 40% on their first serve, when it should have been 70-75%.”