Port Jefferson Country Club Tennis Courts Set to Reopen Amid Trustee Disputes

Two clay tennis courts at the Port Jefferson Country Club are set for restoration and reopening after a nearly three-year absence, with village officials estimating the resurfacing work will cost just under $8,500 — but the prospect of far more demand than available court time has already exposed a rift among trustees over how access should be allocated.

At a March 11 board of trustees work meeting, Deputy Mayor and PJCC liaison Xena Ugrinsky told officials the two courts will be resurfaced and maintained exclusively using funds from membership rates. "There will be no cost for the village," Ugrinsky said.

The courts are what remains of a facility that once had eight. Six were shuttered after coastal erosion at East Beach in 2022 threatened their structural integrity, canceling that year's season for the club's approximately 300 tennis program members and eliminating the summer tennis lessons the village offered. The deeper threat from that same erosion remains unresolved: officials have been weighing a roughly $10 million plan to rebuild the bluff overlooking Long Island Sound along the club's northern edge. Mayor Margot J. Garant has said she may ask the village board to vote on a bond to fund that project. "I don't think we really have a choice," Garant said. "It's just, how do we get this done?"

The gap between the club's former membership base and its current two-court capacity is stark. Alex Spiegel, a member of the CCMAC, told trustees that based on two courts, capacity sits at roughly 60 tennis members, with the possibility of pushing that figure by five to ten. "With the number of memberships that were previously in the club, we have a feeling that we will have a waitlist," Spiegel said. He also cited a wider shortage of nearby courts as a driver of pent-up interest. "There isn't any tennis now that's very close, and if there is there's a waitlist. One of the main facilities has closed."

Trustee Kyle Hill said the limited slots create a fairness problem the village has not yet answered. "If there's more interest than slots, it'll be interesting how they decide to do it," he said. Hill pushed for a lottery as the equitable solution. "Ideally, it should be a lottery. You have all these people who are committed, but we didn't know there was going to be a tennis club this year until it was on the agenda. What if my partner and I want to sign up, you know?"

The tennis court debate unfolded against a backdrop of broader trustee tensions. Officials continued to clash at the March 11 meeting over transparency surrounding renovations at the PJCC, with governance and bylaw questions still unresolved.

The Port Jefferson Country Club, formerly the private Harbor Hills Country Club, has been village-owned since 1978, when it was purchased for $2.3 million from the estate of late developer Norman K. Winston. Whether it can fully recover its tennis program hinges not just on the $8,500 resurfacing job ahead, but on the $10 million bluff stabilization decision still sitting before the board.