Target for tennis center repair: August

Two of the four construction workers on site, bridging the steal structure during the week.

he $2.1 reconstruction project of the tennis center has faced minor delays and is expected to be ready for use in August instead of the original plan of having it done by June.

The center was destroyed in the September 2010 tornado that hit Queens College and left only debris and a fragile bubble’s structure behind.

When construction began early this year, the scheduled date of completions was set for June 2012 but Wing Chan, QC’s project manager, hoped to have it finished by April.

“There are some technical things they had to overcome. One of the things was condensation issues that contractor and designers had to take care of,” Chan said.

Physical work on the court started on April 28 with only a crew of four to six people who have started replacing the brazing, which is bridging or joining the steel beams.

Chan explained the safety issue of many crew members’ mobility on the floor and on the higher parts of the beam that can cause injuries or slow down the project’s process.

The small crew works on a daily basis to catch up for time lost. They pace themselves in cue for the bubble’s fabric, which will be shipped from Japan and arrive in early or mid-July.

After the fabric is placed, the last aspect of this contract’s construction will be the partition of the courts and the new air curtain at the entrance. The structure is designed to look the same as the previous one.

Within the structure some parts of the courts were damaged by the debris.

“I’m not happy with the sample patching,” Chan said. “When you play, if the court is the same the friction is the same but the new patch has a different feel.”

Chan hopes to have the entire court repaired but this repair is not part of the original contract. He will wait for the completion of the current contract to see if there is a need and budget to start court repairs, which he said costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars. According to Chan, this would not take longer than a couple of days, and would not have an effect on the targeted finish date.