Green replaces tennis courts at Salt Lake City's Reservoir Park

(Salt Lake Tribune) Bordered by a sweeping concrete wall and dotted with young trees, the southwest corner of Reservoir Park was peaceful on a recent morning. Only a line of footprints disturbed the surface of a newly fallen layer of springtime snow.

A year ago, the scene at 1300 East and 100 South in Salt Lake City would have been very different. Instead of a wide-open green space, the approximately football-field-sized area was covered by a decrepit set of tennis courts.

The project to demolish the courts is nearly finished. There is new grass and a sprinkling of young trees, along with a new sidewalk on the park's border with 100 South.

In their heyday, the tennis courts were a haven in the middle of the city's east side, said university neighborhood council chairwoman Esther Hunter.

"It was just this incredible feeling of being in the very special place in the center of the city," she said. "What we've gotten back is this space in the middle of the city that's so green. We don't have a lot of green space anymore."

The park was named for a reservoir built in the late 1800s, one of the first built to serve the city's growing population, according to a National Register of Historic Places report.

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