A Long Courtship

Court Contractors celebrates 50 years of serving up Ontario's finest sports courts.

This year, Court Contractors will be lighting fifty candles on their birthday cake, marking a half century of building and renewing recreational sports courts in Ontario and throughout Canada. It’s a milestone that feels pretty impressive in an industry that by its very nature has to weather the ups and downs of matters outside of its control, such as trends in recreation and the vicissitudes of the economy.

 

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE BALL

Among the more recent developments in the industry is a broadening of the types of sports courts people are looking to build, with basketball and especially pickleball gaining popularity rapidly.

“Pickleball has become a big part of our business,” acknowledges Richard Phelan, the current owner of Court Contractors, noting demand for all sorts of courts really boomed with the pandemic. “Racquet sports in general are great. There are few other sports where you have an opponent you’re trying to beat, but it’s not a physical confrontation—it’s endurance, skill, strategy. When you have a sport that people want to play regardless of what decade of life they’re in, that’s something special.”

EARLY YEARS

It wasn’t a love of tennis, though, that brought Tom Phelan, the founder of Court Contractors, and Richard’s dad, into the field of building sports courts. After getting an engineering degree at Royal Military College of Canada and serving in the Air Force as a Navigator, Tom worked for a few different companies in the oil and aggregate industries. While at Dufferin Aggregates, a customer proposed that Tom come into the paving business with him as a partner. This partnership led to the opportunity to build tennis courts, and soon Tom partnered with his brothers-in-law, Greg Teskey and Mike Brady, to create Court Contractors. (So, it’s been a family affair since day one!)

“Our first project was six tennis courts in Brampton,” recalls Tom, “and we charged $36,000. But that $36,000 probably cost us double that, so it was a big learning experience for us,” he laughs. In the early seventies, tennis courts were evolving from clay and natural grass to asphalt, and Court Contractors came on board just as that transition was occurring.

After their expensive first project, they began to really learn the trade. Around the same time, interest was growing in colouring tennis courts, and once again Court Contractors took the plunge.

“That spring it rained 58 days out of 60,” says Tom, “and we found out that the materials we’d been using to colour the courts weren’t very good. We spent a lot of time redoing jobs we’d already finished.” Still, taking the philosophy that the only source of knowledge is experience, Tom and his (now three) partners committed to continuing to develop their skills and hired crews, starting out with about seven employees, who they drove around in the back of a $700 panel truck with no radio and a bench ripped out of an old car to sit on in the back.

Over the years, the partners brought their own kids in to work at the company in the summers, some starting at the early age of 14. And that’s precisely how Richard got his start at Court Contractors. After working his way through school in the summers, and then as a Civil Engineer for nearly a decade, he eventually rejoined full-time and later bought everyone else out over a seven-year period. “He did that on his own without any help or favours,” recalls Tom with some pride. “And he’s built the company into something bigger still.”

The Approach

Their business can be divided into three elements: clubs, municipalities, and private courts. “When someone calls, we have a conversation about how they’re going to use the court,” Richard explains. “Is it for them, their kids, their spouse, the public, or club members, for instance.” Then decisions have to be made about what the final court will look like. Maybe you add lines for pickleball, or install a basketball hoop. You can’t have everything in one court, but “the bottom line,” says Richard, “is that we give them what they want.”

The company builds with any type of court material, including artificial grass and clay, though by far the most common material used is asphalt, of which two types are suitable: penetration and hot-mix. When Tom started, it was all penetration asphalt. Unlike hot-mix, penetration asphalt is not strong enough to support a car, but it’s softer underfoot and more shock absorbent, which has benefits for play and is easier on the body’s joints. However, it’s more manually intensive to build a court with penetration asphalt, and you need a certain level of skill, which made it less popular with many court installers for a good 10 or 15 years. “We made the decision to stick with this process when others were abandoning it because we really believed in its benefits,” says Richard.

Today, Court Contractors is the only company that does asphalt and colour work and specializes in tennis courts; most of their competitors either do other paving work or subcontract that part of the work out.

Values and Value

Court Contractors generally has one crew working construction and numerous crews working on resurfacing. “What we want is to make the court, leave you to enjoy it, and then not see you again for ten years,” says Richard. After about that amount of time, most courts will need to be resurfaced due to wear and tear from play, UV damage, and exposure to the elements.

As a signifier of their commitment to quality in their work and materials, Court Contractors provides a long-term guarantee that the court will remain crack-free for seven to ten years, depending on location (for example, Muskoka’s granite bedrock is a more stable base stone, so the longer, 10-year guarantee applies here).

An even better guarantee can be found in the values that the company upholds. Much like the original partners after the 58 days of rain all those years ago, Richard is committed to treating clients with fairness and delivering on his promises. “It’s construction,” he says. “Stuff happens. But if things ever don’t go as planned, we’ll always be there to make it right.”

It’s an integrity-first approach that permeates through the company, where some employees have been on the team for 30 years or more, and young people can earn enough to pay their way through college or university. “People like working here,” says Richard, “and a company is really all about the people who work there. Without them and the approach they take to what they do, we just couldn’t be successful.”

Tom has been retired for about five years now, but he’ll still make the odd sales call from time to time. As he and Richard reflect on the 50-year mark and look ahead, they share a certain pride that’s hard not to notice. “He’s done an excellent job,” says Tom, nodding toward Richard, “even if I don’t tell him that very often.” Richard laughs. He has a different perspective. “I got to reap the benefits of all the hard work Dad, Uncle Greg, and Uncle Mike put in during the early years,” he says. “I was lucky enough to pick up where they left off.”

In addition to private residences, Court Contractors Ltd. has created stunning tennis courts for some of southern Ontario’s and eastern Canada’s most prestigious athletic clubs. They’re proud of their work and the quality craftsmanship on display in their projects throughout Canada.

 

 

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