SEQUIM — Supporters of a proposal to erect a 40-foot-high inflatable dome-shaped fieldhouse to cover tennis courts at Sequim High School watched Monday night as the School Board unanimously rejected the idea.
“I don’t know what we are going to do,” said Randy Johnson, a Peninsula Tennis Club supporter who oversees an anonymous donation of $150,000 toward building indoor tennis facilities on the North Olympic Peninsula.
“We have the money — we just don’t have the space to put it.”
Allison Hastings, Peninsula Tennis Club president, Johnson and several others supporting the proposal to place the 120-foot by 296-foot structure, known as the “bubble,” on aging Sequim School District tennis courts saw the school board vote 5-0 to burst the proposal after making their plea.
Johnson and Hastings complained that there had not been enough dialog between the tennis club and school officials, with such issues as fire safety and a fire sprinkler system coming up only just before a decision was made.
“It takes a dialog,” Johnson said, “and to be honest with you there wasn’t a dialog.”
Hastings said tennis club must now work with the Clallam County Family YMCA in Port Angeles to determine if the club can acquire the inflatable, which is stored in a hangar at William R. Fairchild International Airport.
The deadline for making that determination is Friday, Hastings said.
If the club does not take possession, Hastings said, the YMCA would have to sell the bubble.
“The issue is if we take it over, where is it going to go?” she said.
The Peninsula Tennis Club proposal, which came to Sequim more than a month ago after it was rejected in Port Angeles in 2007, went back to the School Board on Monday.
It was the second time Schools Superintendent Bill Bentley recommended to reject the “bubble” based on study by the district’s facilities committee, on which he is a member.
Bentley and John McAndie, district supervisor of maintenance and operations, recommended against the tennis club’s proposal about a month ago.
They raised concerns about the structure attracting vandalism and not fitting in with the overall campus that includes space shared by the high school, Helen Haller Elementary and Sequim Middle schools.
Bentley on Monday night raised the new issue about meeting fire codes, saying he was told by the fire marshal that such a facility would draw spectators and require a fire suppression sprinkler system.
Meeting city building codes was another worry.
Bentley said infringing on green space donated to the district years ago for they express purpose of outdoor sports was another potential legal issue.
Marty Hoffman, Hastings’ father, said such an indoor tennis facility “would bring people to town” and give the school district better tennis courts because the tennis club would resurface the existing cracked courts.
Stephen Rosales, a well-known volunteer with the Boys & Girls Club of the Olympic Peninsula in Sequim, said the dome proposal was at least worth a try.
“What’s wrong with trying it for two years?” Rosales said. “If it doesn’t work, pull it down.”
But School Board members questioned whether the tennis club would pay for utilities associated with heating, lighting and air pressure to keep the dome inflated, which Bentley estimated would cost at least $25,000 a year — and possibly as much as $60,000 — to keep it heated.
Hastings, however, argued that the facility would not be heated.
Board Director Virginia O’Neil said the “bubble” proposal was “just not a great fit for us.”
The School Board is in the midst of making serious decisions about facilities in the district and the inflatable would further complicate those decisions, she said.
School Board Director Sarah Bedinger said the district is looking at a shortfall of about $500,000 in the coming year and more unforeseen costs associated with the dome were a concern.
The “bubble” was donated to the Clallam County YMCA in 2007 by the U.S. Tennis Association in New Jersey for the cost of shipping.
It once served as a temporary fieldhouse at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
