2011-1004 Special City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Special City Commission Meeting October 4, 2011 Sunny Isles Beach, Florida 4. CITIZEN'S FORUM 4A. Add-On: Discussion by Alex Kushnir regarding a Tennis Center in Sunny Isles Beach. Action: Alex Kushnir asked the City Commission to build a Tennis Center in the City as it would bring in tourists and tournaments. Vice Mayor Thaler said that Mr. Kushnir has come before the Commission many times in the last two years asking for tennis courts. He said that we have done some research and learned that Miami-Dade County has tennis courts at Haulover and they are willing to let us take over and run them. He had gone to the City Manager and asked him to check into it to see if they are still willing to give it to us and what the cost would be. City Manager Cohen said he did have a meeting with the County Parks people the other day at Haulover and they did discuss the concept of the City investing in the tennis courts and then having control over the reservations for those tennis courts, and so they are willing to basically turn those over to us, let us improve them, and then we would be able to run them. They would be open to the general public but we would run the reservation system for them. He does not have a cost yet but he will be contacting companies that does do tennis court installations and see what kind of cost we can get. Vice Mayor Thaler asked him when he does that to come back with different bases for the court, he asked Mr. Kushnir who's daughter is a professional tennis player, what they are using as base on the tennis courts. Mr. Kushnir said because of the wind and the ocean he recommends they use hard court. He said the bottom line is we need an actual Tennis Center, the other cities have a Tennis Center not just tennis courts. A Tennis Center is where our children develop, it is for our future, you can have tennis tournaments and people will come from all over as he travels with his daughter to different tennis tournaments. Mayor Edelcup said that is what we are looking for and we need to determine if we can work off the current courts at Haulover that have parking and space already assigned rather then try to find a location in our City which may be hard to do, and it may give us a running jump if the cost justifies us going forward. He thinks the first thing we should do is to have the City Manager continue his research and find out what it is that we would have to do to the Haulover courts, would those courts then be the Sunny Isles Beach Tennis Courts in Haulover, would we be leasing those courts for that facility from the County, and then move forward. That would accommodate what you are looking for since we can additionally run our buses over to that court. City Manager Cohen noted that while we are researching this, we do have some tennis facilities immediately available to our residents. We have an agreement with Golden Beach, and our residents are allowed to use their tennis courts right now, and their residents are allowed to use our facilities as well, it is a reciprocal agreement. Commissioner Scholl said he doesn't think that is what Mr. Kushnir is talking about, he is talking about a center and a place that would attract tournaments. Mr. Kushnir said that is correct and it is a whole different ballgame. He said some of the tennis courts are not useable, safety is the most important issue and a lot of these tennis courts at Haulover are not safe. In Golden Beach it is a lot of trouble as they don't allow a lot of people to come, and additionally a lot of professional people come in the morning to provide tennis lessons and 12