New, Ambitious Use For Professional Tennis Stadium Revealed

NEW HAVEN, CT — On Feb. 1, it was announced that more than two decades of women's professional tennis excitement in New Haven had come to an end after the Connecticut Open tournament was sold to APG, a leading sports and entertainment company with a strong footprint in Asia.

This meant the end for the popular tennis tournament in New Haven, which boasted some of the all-time great tennis players including Hall of Famer Steffi Graf, a 22-time Grand Slam singles champion, Venus Williams, a 21-time Grand Slam champion, Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, formerly ranked No. 1 in the world, and Czech Petra Kvitová, a two-time Wimbledon singles champion.

The tennis tournament now takes place Zhengzhou City, China. This left behind the Connecticut Tennis Center Stadium, which accommodates seating for up to 15,000 people, and raising questions about what might fill the nation's third largest tennis venue, which now sits empty.

The New Haven Independent provides the answers as to what will take the stadium's place. This week, the city of New Haven awarded approval to Premier Facilities LLC to turn the stadium at 45 Yale Ave. into the "Westville Music Bowl," the New Haven Independent reports.

The tennis stadium will become an outdoor concert and comedy venue between May and September, the Independent reports. A group that owns the College Street Music Hall, which is a venue at 238 College Street that offers live music performances in downtown New Haven, will operate the facility as a non-profit.

According to the New Haven Indy, a temporary stage will be set up and the music concerts will accommodate up to 5,000 people. The new operators vowed that cars would be kept off of side streets and that there is ample parking in the Yale lots. All concerts will end by midnight. The operators will lease the stadium from Yale.

The Connecticut Open generated more than $10 million annually in economic impact for the city of New Haven and state of Connecticut, and provided significant philanthropic support for local organizations.

Former Connecticut Open Tournament director Anne Worcester said in February that it has been an "amazing 21-year run for women's professional tennis in New Haven and we are truly grateful to all the fans, volunteers, players, media and sponsors involved."

Once news surfaced that the tournament would be leaving Connecticut, Kvitová said in February that the "Connecticut Open was always one of my favorite tournaments and continued to get better every year. On behalf of the players, I would like to thank Anne Worcester, the city of New Haven, Yale and most important the fans who came to watch us, who supported us through the years and who made us feel welcome in their beautiful city."

>>>Read the full story in the New Haven Independent here.

With reporting by Tim Jensen/Patch