Westside park tops for tennis

Bishop Park is the recommended location for a controversial $2.3 million tennis center scheduled to be built next year.

Athens-Clarke County's site selection committee recommended Bishop Park to the county commission after a contentious two-year search for a location for the tennis center, a sales tax-funded project Athens voters approved in 2004.

The committee ranked Bishop Park ahead of three other finalists, the Athens YWCO, Satterfield Park and Southeast Clarke Park. The other finalists have serious drawbacks: the cost of buying the privately owned YWCO property; noise and light from nearby Athens-Ben Epps Airport at Satterfield Park; and busy Lexington Road at Southeast Clarke Park.

"Bishop Park consequently became the best site given the alternatives," said Walt Williams, a tennis aficionado who helped get the center on the SPLOST list six years ago.

"I think we can create a very good tennis center by capitalizing on the existing courts," he said.

In a report to the Athens-Clarke Commission released Monday, the site selection committee cited Bishop Park's central location; easy access by car, bus, bicycle and foot; comparatively low cost of construction; and that the 11 existing courts there can be combined with 10 new ones.

The goal is to build a center large enough to attract out-of-town tournaments to generate money for the local economy.

One advantage of Satterfield Park, located off Cherokee Road, and Southeast Clarke Park is the lack of tennis courts on the Eastside. But building the tennis center at either of those locations would mean removing fields used by youth spo

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