We’ve been a little quiet on the communications front since announcing our opening is delayed to Nov 7th due to the city’s fire alarm inspection. But in this communiqué we have nothing but good news.
First – the courts are finished. And you’ll see from the videos below they are fantastic. They are solid and true and play amazingly. Peter Nicol and John Musto tested them. The sand-filled walls give a real sense of solidity and make the courts much quieter than you’d expect. We were a little worried about the court height as it is down to a little under 17 feet because of our need to build acoustical insulation, but as you’ll see from the video footage we didn’t have anything to worry about. Lobs work great and there’s plenty of room to get that ball over your opponent if she’s sneaking too far forward. Take a look at the video for all the details. In keeping with my general optimistic view of the universe, I’m convinced that, after watching Peter and John, when I play on the courts I’ll look just like they do – or better – as will you!
🙂
Second – we’re going to be able to open a little “earlier” than we feared. We can’t really call it early given how delayed everything is, but we’ve discovered that we are eligible for a “Temporary Place of Assembly Certificate” which we are now applying for and will enable us to open “soon”. Our General Contractor would not commit to a date today so we’ve given him until Tuesday October 15th at which point he will commit to an opening date and we will send another email out with the details. When we open we will not be 100% complete – we’ll have courts, changing rooms, showers and lockers. But we won’t have the cafe, laundry facility, or various other items that will come on line shortly thereafter.
Third – our opening will be a “soft open”. This means that for about a month you’ll have access to the courts but we won’t start charging the monthly membership fee. Our soft opening hours will be something like 4pm-9:30pm weekdays, Saturday morning and all day Sunday, and we won’t have some nice-to-haves like a towel service. Outside these hours we will continue to work on completing the space. During the soft opening, we will mostly be programming the time with instruction, round robins and events, but we will feather in some limited court booking availability as well as we get into our stride. To kick it all off we will have a party so you can all come down to see what’s been built.
That’s all for now. We’re incredibly excited to bring these five squash courts to the Squash Community – if you haven’t signed up for membership yet and want to be part of the opening, now is the time – just click here.
Remember, don’t boast – just keep it deep,
James.