Manhattan, Kansas Spends $2.4 Million To Replace Its Unusable Tennis Courts With Eight New Ones
- Manhattan, Kansas unveiled its first-ever post-tensioned tennis courts at CiCo Park on Aug. 29, replacing three older courts the city had identified as unusable.
- The $17.5 million CiCo Park renovation, funded by the city’s 0.25 percent quality of life sales tax, included $2.4 million spent specifically on the new eight-court tennis complex.
- City officials say the expanded facility, grown from three courts to eight, is designed to eventually host high school regional and USTA tournaments while giving local youth and adults more room for both drop-in play and organized programs.
Eight Courts Where Three Used To Sit Broken
Manhattan, Kansas has a new place to play tennis, and it replaces a facility the city itself had written off. The community’s first-ever post-tensioned tennis courts officially opened at CiCo Park on Aug. 29, with residents turning out for an opening ceremony to mark the project’s completion.
The eight new courts replace three that city officials had described as unusable. Post-tensioned concrete gets reinforced with steel cables pulled tight as crews pour it, a technique that resists the kind of cracking that had made the old CiCo courts unplayable.
A Decade in the Making
The project traces back further than this summer. Aaron Stewart, director of Manhattan Parks and Recreation, said the opening was part of the city’s long-range facility upgrade study, a long-term development effort that got underway in 2014 and 2015.
“We built the recreation centers as well as the Steel and Pipe Supply Ballpark,” Stewart said. “The tennis courts are identified as a major piece of that study.”
The work is paid for by Manhattan’s 0.25 percent quality of life sales tax, a dedicated funding stream residents approved to support recreational infrastructure. Of the money the tax has generated, $17.5 million went toward the broader CiCo Park project, with $2.4 million of that total spent specifically on the new tennis courts.
Manhattan is home to Kansas State University, and the city’s parks system serves both a year-round resident population and a student body that cycles through every fall and spring. That mix puts extra pressure on shared outdoor recreation space, which is part of why Stewart’s department has treated the CiCo Park courts as a priority worth a multi-year wait inside the broader facility plan rather than a project to squeeze in whenever funding allowed.
From Three Courts To Eight
Manhattan’s old tennis setup at CiCo Park had fallen behind what the community needed. Stewart said the three original courts were previously described as unusable and were identified for replacement well before construction began. Expanding to eight courts gives Manhattan more everyday capacity and, for the first time, a designated facility for the Manhattan High School tennis team.
“Our goal is to eventually host tournaments including high school regionals and also with the United States Tennis Association (USTA),” Stewart said. “We’d like to see a significant increase in tennis programming at that location. The real purpose to build them is for our local users, including our youth and adults for both drop-in use and new programs.”
For a college town used to squeezing tennis into whatever court space happened to be in decent shape, the difference is immediate. Grace Geisbrecht, a junior in athletic training, said a dedicated, well-maintained space makes a real difference for people who simply want to stay active outdoors.
“It is beneficial for people to be active,” Geisbrecht said. “The new renovations of the tennis courts provide space for that. It was hard for us to find good available tennis courts because the other ones were in bad shape and beat up.”
Part of a Broader Build-Out
Manhattan’s investment lands inside a strong national trend. U.S. tennis participation hit a record 27.3 million players in 2025, up 1.6 million, or 6 percent, from the year before, according to the 2026 U.S. Tennis Participation Report from the USTA. Participation has grown more than 26 percent dating back to 2020, and nearly 4.9 million Americans picked up a racquet for the first time in 2025 alone, an all-time high for beginners. Core players, defined as those playing 10 or more times a year, reached a record 14.5 million nationally, more than half of all participants.
That growth is pushing cities and universities to upgrade aging court infrastructure rather than let it sit in disrepair, which is effectively what had happened to Manhattan’s original three CiCo courts before the rebuild. A facility built to modern standards, with room for tournaments and formal programming rather than just casual drop-in play, positions a city to capture some of that growth instead of losing players to whatever court happens to be least cracked.
Stewart’s ambitions for CiCo Park reflect that shift directly. Hosting high school regional matches and USTA-sanctioned events would put Manhattan’s tennis programming on a different level than a set of public courts primarily used for casual play, and it would give the Manhattan High School team a true home facility for the first time. Regional and USTA-sanctioned play also tends to bring visiting teams and families into town for a weekend, the kind of secondary foot traffic that local business owners near a busy tournament venue notice.
The timing lines up with a broader shift in how public recreation departments think about racquet sports. Courts that sat cracked and underused for years, like Manhattan’s old CiCo setup, are increasingly treated as a liability rather than a line item to defer, especially in college towns where students, faculty and year-round residents all compete for the same limited outdoor space.
Tennis is not the only racquet sport riding that wave nationally. The same USTA report that tracked tennis’s climb to 27.3 million players also counted 24.3 million pickleball players and 1.1 million padel players in 2025, the first year padel was broken out as its own category in the data. Manhattan’s project is specific to tennis, but it sits inside a moment when cities of every size are being asked to find room, and budget, for more court sports than they were building for a decade ago.
What It Means for Local Players
For now, the immediate impact is simpler: eight courts that work, replacing three that did not. The opening ceremony on Aug. 29 drew community members eager to see the finished product after years of the city’s long-range facility upgrade study working through other priorities first, including the recreation centers and the Steel and Pipe Supply Ballpark that came before it.
Between the new courts, the dedicated high school team facility, and the stated goal of attracting regional and USTA tournament play, Manhattan is betting that better infrastructure will translate into more people on the court, both the students who now have a true home facility and the adults who, like Geisbrecht, simply wanted somewhere decent to play. For a facility that spent years being described in the past tense as unusable, the fix was not complicated: pour better courts, fund them properly, and expand from three to eight so demand has somewhere to go.
Stewart’s department has not announced a date for the first regional or USTA-sanctioned event at CiCo Park, and the courts only just opened at the end of August. But the infrastructure is now in place for Manhattan to make that case, something the city could not have done with three courts that everyone involved had already agreed did not work.
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