A general view of outside courts during day eleven of The Championships Wimbledon 2024 at All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 11. The proposal includes building 38 new courts, an 8,000-seat indoor show court and about a dozen buildings.Julian Finney/Getty Images
The private club that’s home to the Wimbledon tennis tournament has won planning permission to more than double the size of the complex in southwest London, despite objections from hundreds of residents who have pledged to continue to fight the proposal in court.
The All England Lawn Tennis Club has announced plans for a £200-million expansion, or $361-million. The proposal includes building 38 new courts, an 8,000-seat indoor show court and about a dozen buildings.
The AELTC has argued that the expansion was necessary for Wimbledon to keep pace with Grand Slams in New York, Paris and Melbourne. Crucially, they said, it will allow the club to hold the week-long qualifying tournament, which currently takes place at a tennis centre in nearby Roehampton.
But people living near the Wimbledon complex have been waging a four-year battle to block the proposal, saying it will destroy a 200-year-old green space and offers few benefits for locals. They’ve held dozens of public meetings and gathered 21,000 names on a petition calling for the project to be halted.
The issue came to a head on Friday at a packed hearing at London’s City Hall before Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe, who is responsible for planning applications. Several dozen residents attended the hearing dressed in “Save Wimbledon Park” T-shirts while another group stood outside the main entrance carrying signs that read “No stadium.”
After nearly four hours of debate, Pipe ruled that the benefits of the plan outweighed the harm.
“As is widely accepted, the Wimbledon Championships is the most prestigious tournament in world tennis, which attracts a global audience, visitors, and contributes to London’s brands in terms of culture, sporting, heritage and as a visitor destination,” Pipe said. “I consider that the proposal would be important in helping secure the future of these Championships in this location.”
The AELTC’s chief executive, Sally Bolton, welcomed the decision. “It’s fantastic news,” she said after the meeting. “We can look forward to delivering one of the greatest transformations since the London Olympic Games, which I think we’re all very excited about delivering.”
Much of the expansion will be on a 29-hectare private golf course the AELTC fully acquired in 2018 and which is no longer in use. The golf course is across the street from the main Wimbledon site and it lies within the wider Wimbledon Park green space, which was created in the 1700s.
The area has been designated by the city as Metropolitan Open Land, which means that any development can only be permitted under “very special circumstances.”
In its application, the AELTC said the project met that test. The club said the expansion includes 11 hectares of park space and walking trails, which will be accessible to the public. It has also promised improvements to Wimbledon Park’s small lake and vowed to plant 1,500 trees to replace more than 300 mature trees that will be removed. And the club has committed to making seven of the 38 courts available for community use.
Shan Warnock-Smith, who lives near the golf course, told the hearing that she supports the expansion because it will finally turn the golf course into something more useable. The course “just sits there and does nothing,” she said. “So the question really is, what has to be done with it? Not whether something should be done with it.”
But they were in the minority on Friday and most of those who spoke were firmly against the expansion. Many argued that the AELTC’s commitments failed to make up for the loss of the green space and they noted that just 28 per cent of the expanded sites would be accessible to the public.
“We are all hugely alarmed at the real devastation this application will inflict on the environment,” said Susan Cusack, a local resident and member of the Save Wimbledon Park campaign.
Richard Rees, a tennis architect who also belongs to Save Wimbledon Park, told the hearing that Wimbledon’s revenue has been growing every year and an expansion of this size wasn’t necessary. The only real beneficiaries would be the AELTC’s 300 members, he added.
“The Grand Slams are a cabal, and they will not let themselves be broken up or shrink, " he said. “Wimbledon is a unique Grand Slam that should be celebrating its sympathetic relationship to the park and its place in the British summer festival tradition, and not creating an industrial-scale commercial-tennis complex. Size is not everything.”
Pipe disagreed and said the AELTC’s commitments met the “very special circumstances” test. He also accepted the club’s argument that the expanded tournament will generate more than £300-million ($542-million) in extra economic activity every year and create 40 full-time positions as well as 200 seasonal jobs.
Some residents shouted “shame on you” as he read out his decision.
“It’s certainly not over yet,” Cusack said after the meeting. She said the group expects to file a legal challenge to Pipe’s decision. “We’re going to keep fighting. Our environment is far too important to stop fighting.”
Bolton offered something of an olive branch and acknowledged that the club needed to rebuild trust with the community. “We recognize that there are a relatively small group of people locally who feel really disengaged, and so it is incumbent upon us to find a way back from that,” she said.