No one plays tennis, need tennis court?

We have 2 tennis courts. A few families here used to play but they moved out back in February and no one has played tennis since. Some homeowners wanted to turn one/both of them into a dog park. That idea got squashed pretty quick since there are 12 homes within a couple hundred feet, the pool is right next to the courts, a 0.5 acre dog park isn't very big in the first place, and people realized that maintenance and enforcing dog park rules would be a nightmare. The HOA doesn't want to be in the dog park business.

Anyway, the tennis courts sit there. Maybe there will be a resurgence of prospective homebuyers who play tennis one of these days.

A friend who have a townhome in a large Palm Desert (CA) golf-course HOA says his courts were removed due to non-use. And a special assessment was levied, which paid for a very nice fully-equipped Fitness Center, which he says gets lots of use. Very few kids in his HOA.

I've written about our community (townhouse community of 156) getting rid of our pool. Lack of use plus the increasing costs to maintain it were factors in the Board's recommending to the community that we get rid of it. We needed 75% of homeowners to agree to this and after 18 months of soliciting votes, we got the number we needed.

If you're thinking about doing this, you should check your documents first to see if homeowner approval is required. Even if the board can decide to get rid of it without homeowner input, that would be a HUGE mistake. Since part of your assessments are paying for maintenance anyway, it helps if people understand where the money's going and why - if they'd rather keep the tennis court and are ok with maintenance, that's the end of that.

Start with a poll to see who's really interested in keeping the courts or hold a special homeowner's meeting to discuss the matter (not vote on it yet). Get your numbers together - what does it cost to maintain, repair and replace the nets, lights, etc? How much have costs increased over the last five years or so compared with usage?

As for the property value issue, that's the reason previous boards in our community hesitated to get rid of the pool because there was talk that property values would take a hit of at least 5%. When I was on the board and we decided to go through with making a recommendation to the community, we polled a few realtors who'd bought and sold homes in our community and learned it really wasn't the deal maker/breaker everyone thought it was. At that time, we were having a huge problem with delinquencies and that was more of a factor than anything else. We mentioned that when we presented homeowners with a fact sheet listing the numbers and the alternatives to the pool vs. keeping it.

This is all definitely more of a hypothetical. I would totally want at least half of the community to actively say "Yes, get rid of it", and not even simply a majority of people who voted. With that said, it's hypothetical because we just sunk $15k to get it refinished, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon (I'm not persuaded by sunk cost arguments, but most people probably don't understand the concept of sunk costs).

A fitness center would probably be pretty cool! Based on others' observations about dog parks, those probably aren't going to be the best idea. I wonder how much it would cost to put in a fitness center with space for like 6 treadmills, a few weight machines, and a few other things you tend to see in a gym. I really did enjoy having a gym conveniently located at my complex when I was an apartment dweller.

Well, since you've just spent a pile of money on refinishing it, see what happens over the next few years - maybe people will be more inclined to use it because it looks better. Or wait until your next reserve study where you'll have to recalculate the replacement costs of your community's major components anyway. You may be surprised at how many people du understand the concept of sunk costs, especially when you say that's accounting/economics speak for money that's already been spent and can't be recovered (plain English is always better than jargon).

Does your CC&R's specifically say the association will maintain tennis courts in good working order? Or, do they simply say maintain ammenities?