Kamau Murray, tennis pro and founder of XS Tennis, plans a $41M Chicago expansion in Washington Park, which will include a Hyatt hotel, apartments, retail, and pickleball courts to boost tournaments and community growth.
His original $17M XS Tennis Village opened in 2018 to give local youth year-round access to tennis and opportunity.
Despite some resident concerns, Alderman Pat Dowell backs the project for its safeguards and potential to spur State Street redevelopment.
The second of two ambitious investments for Chicago South Side’s fourth poorest zip code could see construction begin later this year after city approval.
“There’s always a challenge,” said Kamau Murray, a tennis pro and founder of XS Tennis Village, a mammoth indoor and outdoor complex that is transforming the once-abandoned neighborhood into a destination with spinoff development. “It’s never a go until it’s a go, but we are taking steps forward every day.”
A rendering shows the hotel and apartment complex that would help anchor the U.S.'s largest minority-owned tennis complex. Image: XS Tennis
His XS Tennis and Education Foundation is the largest minority-owned tennis organization in the United States. Murray’s dream is to bring tennis to impoverished communities and give young African Americans a better chance at excelling in a sport that has long eluded them.
The Village, an almost $17 million State Street facility in Washington Park featuring 12 indoor and 15 outdoor courts, opened in 2018 on decades-old, abandoned land that once was home to public housing. It attracts players from both within and outside the city for learning, practicing, and sports tournaments.
Murray said he built it because he’s a tennis coach.
“That’s my schtick. If you don’t have a roof in Chicago, you have a summer camp. So I built a facility where kids would have the opportunity to train and chase their dreams 52 weeks a year.”
Now Murray wants to up that profile by adding a $41 million six-story hotel and five-story apartment building immediately across the street, also on long-empty land.
The hotel would serve as an anchor for travel tournaments, and Murray has a franchise agreement with Hyatt. Minority-owned retail would fill the first floor. Meanwhile, the apartments would have pickleball courts and a café.
“It’s a great way to create an amenity on the ground floor” for a more accessible sport than tennis, he said.
The building exteriors would match the current Village’s terra cotta and gray facades.
Murray said it was difficult raising financing for the earlier Village and it hasn’t been easy for this project.
“It takes a lot of creativity and a lot of stamina,” he said. “But luckily I’m a pretty good tennis player and pretty good tennis coach, so I’ve got lots of stamina.”
While minority neighborhoods sometimes rely on, say, exclusively Black investors, Murray said that’s not the case here.
“We’re welcoming anybody who believes in equity.”
The pro is committed to Washington Park. He said the Village has “become an anchor and you become largely responsible for trying to move the rest of the neighborhood forward.”
However, a citizens group is worried construction could impact nearby homeowners as well as a school. A spokeswoman did not return a comment request.
But local city council alderman Pat Dowell of Ward 3 dismissed concerns.
She said building and noise codes “have safeguards and guardrails to lessen the impact.” Residents would also have a 24-hour line to phone in complaints. As for the school, there are two other hotels close to schools in the area.
“I am very happy to support this proposal,” Dowell said. “This injects new life into the State Street corridor and helps be a catalyst for other development that would come along State Street and Garfield, the major commercial corridor adjacent to this property.”
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