RALEIGH – John E. Smith grew up in Biltmore Hills Park, a Southeast Raleigh neighborhood. Smith also has been playing tennis at the park’s courts all his life.

Although there is a plan to add eight more tennis courts through the Raleigh Parks Bond Referendum, Smith and others want to see the existing courts upgraded. The park was originally built with four courts in 1967. Four additional courts were built after petitioning by the community.

“The courts are now 50 years old,” Smith said, explaining that the lifespan of a tennis court is 25 years. “There’s a difference in playability between an old court and a brand new court.”

Last month Raleigh Parks hosted the first of its public input sessions about an additional eight acres to the east of the park. The parcel, which was the former site of a landfill, is now overgrown with vine.

Project manager Emma Liles says removal of the landfill debris, which looks mostly like construction material, is “prohibitively expensive.”

“The site also has some steep slopes, which creates an opportunity for some great views,” Liles said, but the plan must include consideration of ADA accessibility.

Removal of the landfill debris would also cause a major cliff from the adjacent road down into the park, which would be dangerous and create further erosion from the road. A creek running through the new site also could cause the land to move. These present some challenges for environmental remediation, Liles explained.

There is also a proposal for a future greenway that would connect the surrounding areas to the park. Development of the site will be funded through Raleigh’s Penny for Parks tax, budgeted at $250,000.

Despite the purpose of the input session being specifically for the eight acres, John Smith, Donald Haith, Brenda Williamson and Nicole Sullivan, who have been playing tennis together since their college days, spoke up about the older courts getting renewed.

“Biltmore Hills was once the mecca of Black tennis,” Sullivan said. She added that the $250,000 for the eight acres could easily contribute to renewal of the old courts. Sullivan and Williamson said the old courts are now sloping and have poor drainage. 

When Donald E. Smith was in college in the 1970s, he and others created the Ebony Racquet Club, where Black tennis players could come together.

“We formed because we decided, why should we have to leave the community?” Smith said. According to an initial context analysis by Raleigh Parks, the park is a cornerstone of the community in Raleigh’s Black community. Williamson was among the residents that petitioned for a playground and an additional four courts.

As more people moved to the city to work at companies like IBM, Black residents wanted to play and be with their community, Smith explained. Eventually, the Ebony Racquet Club grew to 75 coed players. There was no regular schedule. People just knew to come and play.

“When you get off work, you’d come to the courts,” Smith said. “It was a gathering point.” Ebony Racquet Club is still in operation today, drawing a multigenerational crowd and hosts its own tournaments.

Biltmore Hills Park’s additional eight courts will cost $6.75 million. Public input sessions for the eight acres continue through February. A public survey can be found at publicinput.com/biltmoreinput, and questions can be emailed to: [email protected].

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