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The builders of a flagship western Sydney tennis centre have been ordered to pay a council $835,000 after losing a long-running legal stoush over defects and cracking courts.
In 2015, Blacktown City Council hired contractors Statewide Civil to build Blacktown Tennis Centre Stanhope with 16 outdoor tennis courts, including seating for 366 spectators.
The facility was completed in 2016, but in 2017 various defects emerged, including cracking and shifting of the concrete slabs.
Blacktown City Council took Statewide Civil and the architects to court in 2021. The case against Statewide was split off into private arbitration and later landed in the NSW Supreme Court, before the state’s top judge, Chief Justice Andrew Bell.
Statewide has a long list of councils on its client list. It has built netball courts and other sports fields for Randwick City Council, Northern Beaches Council and Canterbury-Bankstown Council.
Blacktown Council originally said the entire tennis court complex needed to be dug up and rebuilt at a cost exceeding $5 million. It alleged the builders “did not use suitable new materials and proper and tradesmanlike workmanship”.
Structural engineer and arbitrator Steven Goldstein said the damages could be salvaged with cheaper repairs, by sealing the cracks, levelling the slabs, and stripping away the existing courts to reinstall a new surface.
“My concern is, what if some of it is design and what if some of it is construction, how do I value it? Secondly, I’m not necessarily convinced that demolition and replacement is the only option,” he said.
While two other engineering experts disagreed on the scope of the rectification work, they both concluded that the tennis courts could be fixed without demolition.
The council said the builders did not appropriately construct joints; that the surface material was not appropriately prepared; and a retaining wall was not sufficiently compacted or constructed properly.
But the builders disagreed, and said the issues related fundamentally to design rather than construction.
The lawyer representing Statewide said in an October 2024 hearing that rectification work “was already going to be needed to be undertaken because of the design issues. The design issues break any chain of causation”.
“Any rectification work would have to be both necessary and reasonable, and we don’t accept that the works proposed by council satisfy either of those limbs.”
The architects were contacted for comment.
On March 10, Bell ruled in favour of the council and ordered Statewide to pay the council $835,854 for rectification works and legal costs.
“We are satisfied that the court has now provided clarity and that the matter can be brought to a close. Our focus remains on delivering quality civil construction projects for our clients and supporting the communities in which we work,” a Statewide spokesperson said.
A council spokesperson said there were no threats to public safety, and that any work on the centre, which remains open, would be communicated in advance.
The Sydney Morning Herald has a bureau in the heart of Parramatta. Email [email protected] with news tips.
