The damage to the tennis bubble at Community Park was a topic of discussion at various village meetings this past week. As word came in that the damage to the structure was more extensive than the recreation department had thought, the recreation commission's tennis subcommittee sped up their process of making recommendations with regard to a replacement for the bubble.

At the most recent village board of trustees meeting, Paul Blake, superintendent of recreation, announced that they were able to partially inflate the tennis bubble to do an inspection of the interior and the inside components. "We found that the damage was extensively worse than we had feared," said Blake. All the hanging lights were smashed and are now useless, there are seven or eight good-sized tears in the interior fabric, the net posts and supporting posts were damaged and the nets themselves "are in a pretty sorry state of repair," according to Blake. He noted that they expected to receive a recommendation from the Tennis Subcommittee at the recreation commission meeting last week, as to a replacement structure for the bubble.

At the Estates Property Owners' Association's meeting, last week, Trustee Robert Lewis, the liaison to the recreation commission, also spoke about the damage to the bubble. He noted that a crew from the company that makes this type of bubble came up from Florida to heat seal the two major rips in the structure and were planning to fully inflate it the following day. Liberty Mutual, the village's insurance carrier, is expected to pay for the temporary repairs. These damages were incurred during a high windstorm in December.

Lewis explained that because the tennis operation is an enterprise fund, and is fully self-sufficient, those who have already paid for the season can expect to see some sort of refund in the future. He added that at this point they did not know how much would be refunded and they still did not know for sure whether or not some portion of the season would be able to be salvaged. "We don't know if we won't be able to put the facility back together and run it in a couple of weeks or not," said Lewis. He added that the determination of whether the bubble can be salvaged at all will be up to Liberty Mutual and the company that built the structure.

"As you know there is a tennis subcommittee that is looking at a permanent structure to replace the tennis bubble," stated Lewis. "The timeline for that has to be moved up, obviously."