When Boulder announced the closure of the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center and the University of Colorado Boulder South tennis courts for housing development and floodplain mitigation, it left the city’s racket sports community desperately searching for an alternative.

A previous proposal in Gunbarrel, the Tennis Center of the Rockies, has been tabled due to strong opposition from the neighboring community, and the owners recently put the plot of land back up for sale.

Steve LeBlang, a Boulder resident and tennis enthusiast, believes he may have just the remedy for a county that’s starving for more recreational opportunities. He said he’s found a prime spot for a public-private venture with the Harney-Lastoka Open Space, located near Colo. 42 and South Boulder Road, on a plot of land between Louisville and Lafayette.

He hopes to build a facility that houses eight indoor tennis courts, 12 outdoor tennis courts and eight covered pickleball courts.

“It’s a perfect location,” LeBlang said. “It’s flat. It’s on Highway 42. It has turn lanes. It has a signal there already. It has an entrance. A lot of the infrastructure, there’s utilities, water and sewer already available. You don’t have to bring anything. … I can’t think of a better location.”

The plot, which sits directly across Courtesy Road from a shopping center that includes Ziggi’s Coffee and Moe’s Bagels, already houses softball fields, a community garden and a water treatment facility.

The first amendment to the intergovernmental agreement, which was drafted in 2014, granted Louisville and Lafayette 24 acres apiece for “athletic fields and similar development.” According to LeBlang, over the past 10 years, Louisville has built a sports complex and Boulder County has contributed the Kerr Community Gardens, while Lafayette’s piece of the property remains vacant.

LeBlang began the process of researching similar public-private ventures surrounding sporting facilities in Colorado earlier this year, and landed on the Parker Racquet Club in South Denver as his ideal model. The privately-owned business leases the land from the city for $1 a year, and then funds itself the rest of the way. It charges $24 hourly fees for members and $40 an hour for nonmembers for usage of its indoor courts.

He said that his venture, funded mostly by himself and his partner Tim Kullick, would incur little cost on taxpayers, and noted that the interest from local tennis players has been “off the charts.” He hopes it can become the new home for the CU women’s team.

“I’m working with a variety of different former players… But it’s also something that at this stage of my life that I wanted to be involved in something for the communities,” LeBlang said. “I’m probably going to be putting a substantial investment into the project myself. I think there are a variety of CU fans, if it was going to be the home for the women’s tennis team, that I think people would be very generous.”

Stephanie Schlageter, owner and CEO of Radiance Medspa in downtown Louisville and a member of the Louisville chamber of commerce board of directors, believes a tennis facility would draw more people to the downtown area and boost local businesses.

She hopes to see the LeBlang’s dream become a reality.

“Oh, I think it’s amazing,” Schlageter said. “It’s honestly a no-brainer for the city of Louisville. I mean, I’m a property owner as well as a business owner in Louisville, and that piece of land that he wants to develop has been just sitting there unused, empty. It’s just a prime piece of real estate that has so much potential and it has just gone unused for like, as long as I know — 14 years, maybe longer — but it’s in such a prime location to be made use of for great community purpose.

“I think that Steve has the plan and the funding and the knowledge and expertise to develop that land into something amazing for the community. I truly think it’s like a gift handed to us on a silver platter.”

Rob Scott, the executive director of the Intermountain Section of the United States Tennis Association — which includes Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Montana and Idaho — said he believed the proposal had the “greatest chance of surviving.”

“I think it might be the University of Michigan (who) did a study on the healthiest sports in the world, and tennis was by far the winner,” Scott said. “If you play tennis regularly, your life is extended by 10 years. That’s the bottom line. It’s the best sport for health and wellness. What that means is it helps society because people are fitter, they’re happier. There’s a whole host of positive benefits for society, for people who play tennis.

“In terms of if people had this opportunity, then that would continue. If they don’t have this opportunity, then it’s going to be quite difficult. People have to travel greater distances to play outside of the Boulder County area. It’s going to be hard to find facilities for them to actually play at.”

Earlier this week, LeBlang — in partnership with the USTA — sent out a mass email asking tennis aficionados to contact their local city and county officials and urge them to support the project. Their website, also details the plan.

In the coming weeks, he intends to speak before the Lafayette and Louisville city councils to lay out his proposal and ask them to amend the IGA. Bradley Curl, a real estate attorney with Packard and Dierking, said that all three parties — Louisville, Lafayette and Boulder County — would have to agree to expand the scope of recreational activities to include tennis and pickleball.

City and county officials from each entity could not be reached for comment.

“We’ve just started the process to understand exactly what procedures may be required with respect to each governmental entity,” Curl said. “Each of those entities is going to have their own process and each of those processes is going to be a robust public process in and of itself. But at the end of the day, we would need approval from all three of them to amend the IGA.

“What they did in Parker — again, I didn’t draft the documents — my understanding is that there’s a public-private partnership, such that private folks come in and undertake all of the construction and the management and maintenance of the facility for the entire term of a ground lease. And then upon expiration of that ground lease term, all the facilities and things revert back to municipality. In that case, to the city of Parker.”