It's a summer afternoon in July and the parking lot of the Kiest Tennis Center is packed. The setting sun shines on its 16 courts. All but four are bustling with school-aged children and college instructors.
This is part of the Dallas Tennis Education Academy's junior programs, which has its own award-winning National Junior Tennis and Learning chapter.
Craig Cole, head pro and director of tennis at Kiest, says mentoring programs have made Kiest a family environment.
One of the players, Inez Beltran, shouts from one of the courts. Cole recognizes the sound of her voice.
"That was Inez," Cole said laughing. "That was Inez down there. And Inez's little sister, she just turned 13 but she's been here since she was alive — since she was in a stroller over there."
The process that will decide who will ultimately manage the tennis center will begin again in August. That's after the nonprofit Dallas Tennis Association, which has managed the center since 2018, lost its chance to renew its contract earlier this year. Many in the community say they want the association to keep managing the facility .
Inez was one of the dozens of people, both children and adults, who came to speak at the June 24 City Council meeting about the management contract for Kiest.
During that meeting, Beltran said she had played at Kiest for 10 years. When her father, Gabriel Beltran, was seriously injured stopping a robbery, Beltran said the coaches were there for her and her family.
"The coaches were there for me when I needed them the most," Beltran said. "That experience showed me Kiest is more than just a tennis center; it is a family."
The Dallas Tennis Association has run programs at Kiest for 25 years. The nonprofit has not always run the facility. It had a contract for five years before another group took over for 11 years. The association took over the contract again in 2018.
Although DTA has run Kiest since then, the group lost the chance to renew its contract this year.
Cole said that's because its Request for Proposal, or RFP, was deemed incomplete because DTA did not include a monetary amount.
Cole said it planned to put the monetary part of the bid in their best and final offer. He said they received a best and final offer from the city two weeks after submitting their RFP and planned to submit the monetary part.
"Then the response back was basically, 'Whoops, this is a mistake on our part, there is no best and the final offer'," Cole said. "So that's kind of why our bid was, I think, deemed a little less advantageous."
The for-profit, McKinney based company Impact Activities was set to take over the management at Kiest. Impact Activities currently oversees three of the four tennis centers in Dallas.
The majority of speakers during the June 24 meeting worried that a for-profit company managing the center would increase prices and push out community members.
Impact Activities President Matt Hanlin is no stranger to community pushback.
"Nobody likes change and everyone's afraid of what change could be, and so they should be concerned of what changes because they don't know for sure what it looks like," Hanlin said.
The council voted to restart the contract process for Kiest, directing staff to go back to the drawing board on who will manage the center.
This time, Cole says they will be prepared with everything needed in the bid.
A group of Kiest parents and supporters are making sure that happens.
Gabriel and his wife Bianca Beltran sit in the Kiest Tennis Center's building with Stephanie Aranda and Chermane Fletcher. The group discuss next steps.
For the Beltrans, whose kids play at Kiest, they are not just patrons.
"We're actually within the community, our kids have been here for decades," Gabriel Beltran said. "And it's a family setting, it's not a business transactional kind of setting here at Kiest."
One of Fletcher's friend started the paper petition for supporters to sign at the center's office. It later became an online petition, created by Aranda, which gained more than 2,000 signatures in support of DTA.
Fletcher said she had experience playing in outside tennis leagues and saw rates increase over time. While parents were concerned about rates impacting the junior program, Fletcher said she was also concerned about rates changing for adult players.
Kiest offers group lessons for adults and has an adult league along with an over fifties league. NAME said it currently costs $320 for nine weeks of tennis.
The junior development program at Kiest is free, Cole said. Another junior program costs around $100 for ten weeks of tennis which he says is "unheard of" and happens four times a year.
Kiest players with DTA have earned scholarships and won awards. Those programs also mean a lot of court space is dedicated to youth players. DTA worried they would lose that space if a for-profit company took over management.
Impact Activities has not lost a contract with any of their cities. The company has consistently grown attendance, revenue, and programs at the facilities it runs.
Impact Activities started at the Courts of McKinney in 2011. Since then, Hanlin has invested time and company money into resurfacing the courts and bringing in players who compete and win awards.
Hanlin said Impact Activities has a 15-year relationship with DTA, helping run their tournaments and hosting their leagues on Impact run courts.
Impact also invests in junior programs and Hanlin said they would continue the Kiest programs, but wants to make sure it provides enough court space for other residents.
"Children playing for very cheap or some of them for free, it's fantastic, and we will continue to do that work," Hanlin said. "But we also have to provide other experiences for the rest."
However, Hanlin says Impact works to understand the needs of the community and tries to align that with the goals of the city.
Each city has a set standard for fees, meaning a private company cannot automatically charge their own rates on city owned facilities. Hanlin said Impact does request price increases over time to match inflation.
Rates can go up incrementally year over year or every few years depending on their request. But all rate requests go through the cities' park and recreation departments for approval.
Impact Activities lets players try out the facilities they run for free and they also give out scholarships for children. Hanlin uses the McKinney facility as an example and says that center gives out $100,000 a year in free tennis scholarships.
"And I do understand that each community's facility is unique," he said. "We don't treat it like a franchise model because it's not."
Hanlin went through the RFP process for Kiest because he thought it was an opportunity for the company to help improve the facility. As of July, he was unsure if Impact Activities would go through the RFP process again and would have to see what the new RFP looks like.
Ryan O'Connor, Dallas Park and Recreation deputy director, told council members that staff have received positive feedback on Impact Activities' service at current city centers.
But he confirmed that it would not be an operational challenge to have two separate vendors for the city's tennis centers.
Because the contract with DTA does not expire until the end of the year — with potential to extend the contract for an additional six months — O'Connor said staff should have enough time to go through the process again.
City staff have told the council that having two separate entities managing the tennis centers
Cole says he has no ill will toward the company, but feels that their entity does not make sense for the needs of the Kiest community like the amount of court space needed for its youth programs.
During negotiations for the RFP process for Kiest, Cole said not a lot of people knew the extent of the situation. He spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking of disappointed players and the lineage and work Kiest had built over the years.
"I'm just trying to be an example for the kids every day," Cole said. "We've talked to them about resiliency and all these things and so, [I] kind of felt I had to do the same."
Now, thanks to the "Rally for Kiest" movement, Cole will not go through the RFP process alone.
The process is anticipated to start in August. In the next couple of months the city will have to outline the RFP process and specifications, including a community engagement element. A final decision and council vote is expected by next June.
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