SEQUIM — A proposal to erect a 40-foot-high inflatable fieldhouse to cover up to six tennis courts on the Sequim High School campus will have to navigate an extensive city planning process.
But it first must get past the School Board.
The Peninsula Tennis Club’s proposal for the hand-me-down inflatable building, which comes to Sequim after it was rejected in Port Angeles, goes back before the Sequim School Board on Monday in the board room at the historic high school building, 503 N. Sequim Ave.
It is not yet known if the school district’s facilities committee, which recommended denying the request, will come back with a second recommendation to approve it.
The School Board had asked the committee to reconsider, taking the positions of a number of supporters into account.
When the committee that includes Bill Bentley, schools superintendent, and John McAndie, district supervisor of maintenance and operations, recommended to deny the tennis club’s proposal about a month ago, members voiced concerns about the structure dominating the landscape of the campus, attracting vandalism and not fitting in with the overall campus that includes space shared by the high school and Helen Haller Elementary and Sequim Middle schools.
“I think we’re still in an investigation [phase],” McAndie said last week, adding there was the option of reducing the structure’s size and reconsidering it based on that.
“I think at the next School Board meeting, we should have a recommendation,” he said.
The 120-foot-by-296-foot structure, known colloquially as “the bubble,” would be 5 feet higher than the city’s 35-foot building height limit and would not meet building codes, city officials said.
“If it goes on the school district site, it still must meet standards,” interim city Planning Director Joe Irvin said.
Those standards include buildings made of wood and wallboard, with required setbacks from other structures, streets and parking areas.
Irvin said the City Council must be kept informed of the process, which must include public comment before any variances in building code standards can be met.
All this takes time, he said.
Peninsula Tennis Club President Allison Hastings said the club had not heard back from the facilities committee after the presentation about three weeks ago.
“It’s a longer process than I thought,” Hastings said.
Hastings said the club of about 100 members still has a $150,000 anonymous donation earmarked solely for indoor tennis to properly install the structure.
Covered tennis courts offer the advantage of tennis programs, Hastings said, not only with the high school, but kids’ tennis programs, kids’ tennis lessons, the U.S. Tennis Association and tennis leagues.
The structure, which is now stored in an airplane hangar in Port Angeles, comes with a lighting system that would allow nighttime tennis play and protection from the weather, which limits play.
Hastings said that one of the four sections could be removed to reduce the structure’s size but that to reduce it by half would not make it worthwhile.
Hastings said she has already contacted Sequim city public works, which oversees city parks, to find if there is park space in the city for the structure.
Jeff Edwards, city parks and recreation manager, said there is no park large enough for it.
“I don’t foresee it happening,” Edwards said.
“I don’t know what to do with something that big. We just don’t have land at this time.”
Even Carrie Blake Park, the city’s largest at about 35 acres, could not accommodate it, he said.
“I’d love to use it, but I don’t see it working at this point,” he said.
The inflatable building was donated in 2007 to the Clallam County YMCA 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., before a permanent fieldhouse was built.
The Peninsula Tennis Club had approached the YMCA about applying for the structure. The club was unable to apply for the structure since it is not a nonprofit organization.
The YMCA had agreed to operate it only if it were located at Erickson Park in Port Angeles and used for indoor tennis and soccer.
The Port Angeles City Council never approved the move.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
