Tennis Auckland explore canopy solution for roof at ASB Classic’s Stanley Street

Tennis Auckland is taking a new approach to putting a roof over Centre Court at Stanley Street for the ASB Classic.

This year’s WTA and ATP tournaments were the worst affected by rain in decades, with almost every day of the fortnight of tennis impacted by bad weather.

It brought the issue of a roof over Centre Court to the forefront of conversations again and following the Classic Tennis Auckland CEO Rohan West went to look for alternatives to the previous plan for a roof from 2015.

Eight years ago plans were drawn up to upgrade the home of tennis in New Zealand for $16.5 million, which included a solid, retractable roof.

Since then, the outdated Yock Stand has been upgraded, but the proposed roof kept getting pushed back, and was completely off the agenda when then Covid hit,

Last summer’s dreadful weather and the likelihood that worldwide climate change could make this a more regular occurrence, so a roof is desperately needed.

West has recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Australia where he examined canopy-type roofs over tennis centres in Adelaide and Brisbane, which can be built at a fraction of the cost of the previously proposed roof for Auckland.

“In the aftermath and during the 2023 ASB Classic there was a lot of chat about the weather,” West said.

“In the months since then we’ve undertaken the development of a business plan around re-energising the whole redevelopment plan, but specifically a roof solution.

“One of the key things that has happened since 2019 and certainly since we did the original plan in 2015, is that a number of Australian venues have retrofitted roofs over their centre courts.

“There is Ken Rosewall Arena in Sydney, Memorial Drive in Adelaide, Brisbane was a new build with a retrofit, but still they’ve gone with a fabric roof structure and all of them have retained their titles of outdoor tournaments.

“So we went over to Brisbane and Adelaide and talked to the people that went through the process of building their business cases, getting the funding and rolling out the solutions.

“It was a fantastic trip, we learnt a heck of a lot about the different steps in the process, but all of them said that if you can get the funding, it is doable and a great solution.”

A canopy roof over Stanley Street would last at least over 30 years, much longer if it’s looked after well and it would also open up the opportunity to use Centre Court for concerts, other sporting events and community activities.

“Once we have a roof that takes away the issues for the past seven months, it becomes an attractive venue for lots of other promoters,” West said.

“Another thing that Brisbane and Adelaide talked about was that it’s not just about the rain. It’s also about sun and heat and giving spectators and players a more enjoyable environment.

“On a blistering hot sunny day in Auckland, Centre Court can be 45-50 degrees Celsius. If you’re in the corporate area or Crosscourt or Yock stands, that’s uncomfortable and we’ve got a duty of care to our players and spectators.

“If we can take the sun out of the mix as well as the rain, we’re going to be offering a far better sports entertainment experience for everyone.”

A fabric-type roof seems to be the perfect solution for Tennis Auckland, but there are issues around design and paying for it to sort out.

“We have had positive feedback from Jasmax, our original architects, saying that there was no significant impediment to the project that they could see,” West said.

“We are working on some renders and design concepts. There are two or three well-known manufactures of canopy roofs for large sporting arenas and Jasmax have engaged with them already, to start picking their brains to get some technical specs.

“A flow on from that is costings and a lot of groundwork and other works that will be involved in the redevelopment and resource consenting has already been done previously.

“So it will be dusting off those plans and seeing what the impact of the significant inflation in construction has had on those costings.

“But at the moment, the numbers that were public domain for the original roof, we’re going to be talking half to a third of that.

“Adelaide was done and dusted in less than a year. So we’d be looking to ensure that a successful roof manufacturer would work on the project in the background during a year and then the first week of February of a year we hand the venue over to them and they’ve said they can definitely have it constructed in the space of 10 months, so ready for the next ASB Classic.”

The earliest construction work could start would be February 2025, but finances would need to be in place.

“The key thing now is finding those funding streams,” West said.

“We know it’s going to be tough from a public funding perspective from multiple sources.

“But I think if we can come back with a community-based solution, that opens the venue up for other uses and show it’s a reduction on previous numbers.

“That should hopefully open us up for discussions with Auckland Council, Central Government and then donors, philanthropists and the general tennis public.”