LAWTON – A contract to replace the aged lights at the tennis courts in Greer Park with new high-efficiency lights was awarded Tuesday by the City Council.
Of the four proposals, Third Generation Electrical of Tulsa was the lowest responsive bidder and won the contract with a price of $199,371. The job is to be completed within 30 calendar days after a work order is issued.
The existing lighting system at the tennis courts is 17 years old and features high-pressure, high-maintenance sodium fixtures that have a low operating efficiency, Public Utilities Director Rusty Whisenhunt informed the council.
The fixtures will be upgraded with a high-efficiency LED (light-emitting diode) system that will reduce operating costs “and provide a 25-year no-cost guarantee,” he said.
“We requested lighting because, especially in the summer evenings when it cools off, people could play tennis under the lights,” the councilman said. “We also want some landscaping.”
In late January the City Council awarded Merritt Tennis and Track Systems of Oklahoma City a $104,000 contract to rehab the eight tennis courts in Greer Park ($82,000) and the two in 35th Division Park at 6th and Dearborn ($22,000).
Greer is a 15-acre park on NW 38th Street south of Cache Road, between Cherry and Elm avenues, across the street from St. Paul’s church. Besides its tennis courts, Greer Park has a pavilion, a natural surface trail around the perimeter, a bicycle path and bike racks, restrooms, and a Kids Zone playground.
The playground was built “in the old-fashioned barn-raising method” over a six-day period in October 2000 by approximately 5,000 volunteers who included community residents and soldiers from Fort Sill, general coordinator Mark Glenn recalled.
Money to finance the project was raised by several civic groups, including Ambucs, Lions and Kiwanis clubs and the Junior League. The Great Plains Ambucs chapter was the designated 501(c)(3) charitable organization for the fund-raising event.
“We had money left over, which we invested,” and today the account has “close to $30,000” that’s earmarked exclusively for expenses of the playground, Glenn said Monday.
Proceeds from the account are used to assist the City of Lawton with maintenance of the Greer Park Kids Zone. Typically those expenses are “things such as sealant for the wood and replacing broken parts on the playground equipment,” he said.
City Councilman Allan Hampton is leading an effort to upgrade municipal tennis courts in Lawton. He said he hopes to generate greater citizen participation – he wants some courts to accommodate pickleball, a sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping-pong – and to attract more high-school tennis tournaments to the city.
Lawton has “a fairly big tennis community,” Hampton said. “We want to offer a higher-end tennis operation here in our city.”
When the city solicited bids on renovating tennis courts at 11 municipal parks – a project authorized in the 2019 Capital Improvements Program, in preparation for tournaments to be hosted in Lawton in the March-April 2021 time frame – Merritt priced the job at $248,750.
“We host two high-school tennis tournaments in Lawton and participate in three in Oklahoma City,” said Jesse Stovall, a sixth-grade teacher at MacArthur Middle School who graduated from MacArthur High School with Hampton in 1974.
“We’ll have 16 schools” from Lawton and elsewhere in the state “participating in a tournament here on March 30,” Stovall said.
Lawton and Eisenhower high schools have eight courts each and MacArthur High has six, he said. The city’s “main attraction” for tennis is Greer Park but it’s not known whether the lighting project there will be finished in time, he indicated.
The city has 21 tennis courts in its parks, Deputy City Manager Bart Hadley noted, but the courts are scattered throughout town and not all of them are “playable,” Stovall said.
Attracting more tennis tournaments to Lawton would “benefit the city in many ways,” Hampton said. “Visitors to our city eat here and buy things, and it provides us with an opportunity to showcase what we have to offer.”
The City of Lawton is developing a Parks Master Plan that will focus on “assessing existing conditions” and identifying future needs for parks, sports & recreation, trails, and open space in the community.” The project is expected to take a year to complete.