If the Center Holds
Portland’s Tennis Centers Need Repairs / Portland’s Public Tennis System Battles Age, Apathy, and Weather
Mariah Botkin
Section / Genre: News / Reportage
On a gray morning, rain pelts the worn fabric dome of Portland Tennis Center’s auxiliary “bubble.” Inside, a steady drip, familiar to longtime players, lands on the courts.
“There’s always the excuse, ‘Well, there’s no money,’” said former Portland Tennis Center (PTC) director Mike Stone. “Maintenance money. So they just don’t do anything.”
Last year a winter storm sent water streaming across the baseline, and the city closed the entire facility for repairs. It reopened with new lights and patches in place—but the fix, like many a fix before, was temporary.
Across Portland, public tennis facilities are showing the strain of decades of deferred maintenance. What they reveal is a city struggling to sustain the public spaces that define its sense of community.
Portland is a tennis city, whether it acts like one or not. More than 80,000 residents play regularly, from kids with borrowed racquets to retirees who’ve been meeting at the same park courts for decades. Yet there’s only one publicly accessible court for every 750 players, approximately, and many are cracked, puddled and filled with moss.
In theory, tennis is one of the most accessible sports there is. All you need is a court, a racquet, a can of balls, and a pair of shoes. It’s not inherently a country-club sport—it’s also a park sport. Tennis should belong to everyone.
PTC, built in 1973, is the city’s only public indoor-outdoor facility. It has hosted everyone from beginners to college hopefuls, and generations of local pros have taught lessons under its roof. But that roof, like much of Portland’s parks system, is aging badly.
“We’ve got about 100 courts, and I’d say half of them are basically unplayable,” Stone said. “It was frustrating to watch the deterioration.”
PTC’s bubble—a 25,000-square-foot inflatable structure designed by Richard Brown Architects and fabricated by Yeadon Fabric Structures—was installed in 2012, converting four of the eight existing outdoor courts into courts suitable for year-round play. At the time, it was hailed as the future of public tennis. Funded through development fees rather than tax dollars, the project increased PTC’s number of indoor courts twofold, from four to eight. In theory, the new covered courts would also generate revenue to help maintain PTC’s remaining outdoor courts.
From a distance, the bubble still looks space-age: a white dome rising in a metropolitan center. Up close, the illusion fades. The heater that warms the bubble was built for two courts, not four, so staff drag in portable hot air blowers each winter to keep temperatures playable.
On the back of PTC’s main building, a fading sign warns, KEEP OFF THE ROOF! THIS AREA IS UNSAFE AND MAY RESULT IN SERIOUS INJURY. Skylights, once clear, have yellowed and weakened from years of rain and sun.
The bubble has collapsed multiple times—February 2021, February 2023, and January 2024—from storms, ice buildup, and burst pipes. Each time, it reopens patched but not cured.
“It’s better than it’s ever been,” said John Block, owner of Players Racquet Shop on NE Sandy Blvd. and current board member of the Greater Portland Tennis Council. Block who cited the center’s recent resurfacing, roof repairs, lighting upgrades, and fantastic leadership. “The bubble’s pretty well taken care of,” he said. “Any surface area that big is going to be water permeable if it's exposed to weather … it's a football field you're trying to keep from leaking.”
Over in North Portland, the facility formerly known as St. Johns Racquet Center, tells a parallel story. Built in 1979, the warehouse-like building was originally operated by Portland Parks & Recreation. But it’s also the longtime home of Portland Tennis & Education (PT&E), a nonprofit founded in 1996 that uses tennis as a vehicle for academic and personal growth. It’s where kids from working-class families learn to serve and volley, but also to study, build confidence, and find mentors who believe in them.
“When I first took over, the courtside leaked like a sieve,” recalled former executive director Danice Brown. “It wasn’t really safe to play, but people wanted to play, so they played through the drips.”
Working with LRS Architects, Inc., and RDH Building Science, Inc., Brown and board member Bob Howard negotiated a 20-year lease with the city and raised more than $500,000 for repairs. “Nothing like this is ever easy, but both sides worked hard,” Howard said. “The outcome was an amazing facility that has benefited young athletes since the work was completed around 2016.”
But even that success story circles back to the same problem: the roof. Under the lease, the City of Portland is responsible for external maintenance, including the roof and structure. The building now leaks again, the HVAC is inefficient, and the outdoor bathrooms still lack hot water.
“Without replacing the roof,” Brown said, “it's not going to matter a whole hell of a lot what you do down below.”
Both PTC and PT&E are waiting for the same thing—the city. Each demonstrates how tennis can serve the public good, and how fragile that good becomes without consistent investment.
Portland Parks & Recreation officials say they’re working to balance limited resources across dozens of facilities, prioritizing safety and equity. But for players and coaches, the results on the ground tell a different story.
Brown is well positioned to speak to the equity lens: “We were serving an underserved neighborhood, underserved kids … How could you not take care of this building when there’s such positive use for it?”
If St. Johns represents what’s possible through community partnerships, PTC shows what’s possible when the city believes in its own programs. Both embody what Parks & Rec says it stands for—connection, health, access, and play.
Tennis is low-cost. It’s social. It’s great for mental and physical health. People play from age three to ninety. If the city wants to keep people moving and build community, this is how you do it.
Councilor Dan Ryan echoed that sentiment at a 2025 committee meeting: “We know that tennis is a forever and growing sport in Portland and internationally … Tennis is a lifelong sport. It's low-cost, highly accessible.” The statement sounded less like politics than common sense.
The city’s Access Discount Program, funded by the 2020 Parks Levy, allows families and individuals to receive up to 90-percent discounts on court and activity fees, based on self-assessed need. “They make it very affordable for those who want to come play tennis,” said Seth Lee, a teaching pro at PTC.
At PT&E, many students arrive with no gear, little experience with organized sports, and needing assistance with transportation. The nonprofit supplies rackets, tutoring, and stability, including help with getting there.
Portland Parks & Rec’s deferred-maintenance backlog was reported as over $1 billion in a 2025 article by Oregon Public Broadcasting. For tennis, that means the city can afford to resurface maybe two or three courts every few years. The bureau’s “Outdoor Tennis Courts and Emerging Recreation Strategy,” from 2022, even acknowledged that 18 public courts should be removed or repurposed due to unsafe playing conditions. Currently, 75% of the city’s courts remain in poor condition.
At a recent City Council hearing, a representative from the Portland Parks Alliance noted that replacing PTC’s roof and HVAC system could cost more than $5 million—and that a proposed USTA partnership could help cover those repairs.
“If we can’t take free money to fix our public tennis center,” posed Portland player Adam Levey. “I just can't imagine, like, what kind of backwards, frightened small town we would be if we can't say yes to something that's this obvious.”
While it’s not at all clear what role the USTA would play in the proposed partnership, or what strings would be attached, it’s undeniable that demand for tennis keeps climbing. “There is double the demand for available court space in the city,” said Councilor Ryan. Tennis in the Pacific Northwest grew by almost 15% between 2018 and 2022.
“We're open, you know, earlier than 7 a.m. and we stay open till almost 10pm, and we're pretty much booked the entire time,” said MaryAnn Thibeault, Parks & Rec’s Sports Management Supervisor, in the recent committee meeting.
A short loop around the city tells more of the story. The courts at Glenwood Park don’t have nets, while those at Colonel Summers and Woodstock Park are laced with grassy cracks.
East of I-205, where nearly half the city’s children live, has the fewest playable courts.
Danice Brown, the former head of PT&E, sees it plainly: the nicer courts are where the nicer housing stocking is.
Inside the bubble, the air hums with the sound and smell of tennis balls. On one court is a teenager practicing serves, on another two retirees rally. On both courts it’s the same yellow ball, the same net.
Mayor Keith Wilson’s proposed 2025–26 budget would trim PTC’s operating hours by one hour per day—saving just $14,000 and shrinking access for people who can’t afford private clubs.
Portland’s public tennis system isn’t a luxury. It’s a mirror—a reflection of what the city values, and who it believes deserves a place to play. Portland Tennis Center and St. Johns Racquet Center were both built in an era when the city saw recreation as civic infrastructure. Fifty years later, they’re still standing, still serving, but they're both waiting for roofs that don’t leak.
Tennis is for everyone. That’s what’s so great about it. The city ought to see it that way too.
Block, of Players Racquet Shop, put it simply: “It’s worth [it for] the city to put the necessary money into it, to keep a functioning tennis facility. [PTC] should be like one of the biggest, busiest, most successful, popular tennis centers on the West Coast because of the tennis community that we have. We're begging for it.”
For now, the courts endure—patched, puddled, beloved. The dome hums. The roof drips. Players keep coming.
This story originally appeared in the Portland Tennis Courterly’s Wet Issue. To purchase a copy, visit our online store