A crowd of more than 100 gathered this afternoon to watch officials with the
city, Columbus State University and the Columbus Regional Tennis Association officially break ground on the expansion of the Cooper Creek Tennis Center.

The expansion of what is already one of the nation’s top clay-court facilities will add nine more clay courts and 12 hard courts for the CSU men’s and women’s tennis teams.

The expansion will allow the facility to attract even more tournaments, which in turn will increase the already considerable economic impact the center has on the city, said Lauren Isom, president of the CORTA board of directors.

In 2013, visitors spent more than $1.8 million to the existing facility, which supported 27 jobs and produced more than $65,000 in local sales taxes, Isom said.

“With the court expansion, we expect the economic impact to be even greater,” Isom said.

Board member Will White is the chair of the board’s expansion project committee, facilitating the purchase of the land and being instrumental in fund-raising, Isom said.

White said the facility will be the best Division II tennis facility in the country, and light-heartedly challenged CSU tennis coach Evan Isaacs to bring a national championship home to it.

“He’s on the hot seat now,” White said.

White said the project goes back more than a decade. After a few years of wheeling and dealing, CORTA purchased most of the land in 2006, not long before the bottom fell out of the economy, stalling the project, White said.

But the land was recently cleared, considerable grading has been done and architectural renderings have been created to show what the expansion will look like. In addition to the new courts, the project includes a building that will house offices and locker facilities for the CSU tennis program and new offices for CORTA.

CSU Athletic Director Todd Reeser said the facility will help the tennis program in several ways. It will help recruit even better players for what is already a nationally recognized program, Reeser said, and it will allow the university to make bids for NCAA regional and national tournaments.

“This partnership and this facility will create a home-court advantage like no other, as CORTA members and other tennis enthusiasts encourage our student-athletes during home competitions,” Reeser said.

The partnership has raised most of the project’s expected cost of $9.5 million. Of the $8.6 million raised so far, $2.25 million came from CSU and $1.7 million from the city. Those kinds of partnerships are rare, CSU President Chris Markwood told the crowd.

 “This tennis facility fits in with our goals, and we are so pleased to be playing a role in this partnership,” Markwood said.

Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said suc partnerships may be rare elsewhere, but not in Columbus.

“As extraordinary as this partnership is, it’s really typical Columbus, Georgia,” Tomlinson said. “We had a group of citizens who saw that a resource could be maximized. Those citizens began to leverage the relationships and contacts they have with not only CSU, but other tennis enthusiasts in the community, those who knew how to get it done, and then coming to the city for our help.”