Tennis-Wimbledon expansion plan goes into legal tie-break

By Amy-Jo Crowley

LONDON (Reuters) -Wimbledon fans will have eyes only for the tennis this week but for those who run the world’s oldest and most prestigious Grand Slam, the real high-stakes contest will unfold not on their grass, but in London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

On one side of the legal net is the campaign group Save Wimbledon Park, while facing them in a judicial review of their ambitious expansion plan on Tuesday and Wednesday will be the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC).

It is the latest stage of a long-running fight that has split the south-west London "village", which has been home to the Championships since 1877.

Last September the AELTC secured planning permission from the Greater London Authority (GLA) to treble the size of the main site to include 39 new courts including an 8,000-seat show court by redeveloping a former golf course on parkland land it already owns.

The 200-million-pound ($272.92-million) expansion aims to increase daily capacity to 50,000 people from the current 42,000, upgrade facilities and move the qualifying rounds on site to mirror the Australian, French, and U.S. Opens.

The plans have the backing of several leading players, including Novak Djokovic, and 62% of 10,000 residents in Merton and Wandsworth, the London boroughs that share the new site, also support the scheme, according to the AELTC.

“Our confidence in the development and the proposals that we’ve been working on for many years is as strong as it ever has been,” Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker told Reuters.

“For the championships to continue to be in the position that it is and to deliver all the benefits to stakeholders including the local community it is vital that we are able to stage the tournament on one site and bring all the grounds together."

However, this week’s judicial review will decide whether the GLA’s decision to grant planning permission was unlawful.

Opponents of the development, including Thelma Ruby, a 100-year-old former actress who lives in a flat overlooking the park, and West Hill Ward Councillor Malcolm Grimston, say the club's plans will cause environmental damage and major disruption to the area.

“It’s terribly important that it does not go ahead not just for myself but for the whole planet and future generations," Ruby told Reuters.

"I overlook this beautiful landscape and there are all sorts of covenants that say you mustn’t build on it, and yet the tennis people have this unnecessary plan they admit will cut down all these glorious trees, which will harm wildlife.

“They’re using concrete, building roads, they’re going to have lorries polluting and passing my window every 10 minutes. The whole area will be in chaos as they’re closing off roads,” she said.

Save Wimbledon Park says the GLA failed to consider covenants that were agreed by the AELTC, including restrictions on redeveloping the land, when it bought the Wimbledon Park golf course freehold from Merton council in 1993 for 5.2 million pounds.

The AELTC paid a reported 63.5 million pounds to buy the Golf Club's lease, which was due to run until 2041.

The campaign group also believes the GLA failed to consider the land’s statutory Public Recreation Trust status which means it should be held as "public walks or pleasure grounds".

“It is not antipathy towards the AELTC that’s driving this, as some of the benefits are real, such as the extension of lake,” councillor Grimston told Reuters.

“The problem is that it will treble the footprint of the current Championship and turn what currently has very much a feel of being rural England and a gentle pace of life into an industrial complex that would dominate the views of the lake.

“That’s why it’s classified as Metropolitan Open Land, which is the urban equivalent of the green belt that has been protected for many decades in planning law in the UK and rightly so,” he said.

The AELTC say the plans will improve the biodiversity of the park, as well as bringing parts of it back into public use.

“The London Wildlife trust have endorsed the plans, they’ve spent many hours scrutinising our analysis and our expert views," the AELTC’s head of corporate affairs Dominic Foster said.

"We know that this expansion will deliver a very significant benefit to biodiversity, whereas golf courses are not good for biodiversity.”

($1 = 0.7328 pounds)

(Reporting by Amy-Jo Crowley, editing by Mitch Phillips and Clare Fallon)