Reston Association members will not be casting votes in 2012 on whether they support an indoor tennis facility to be built at Lake Newport, but the board of directors will continue to look for other ways to get it done.

The RA board voted 8-1 at its meeting on Thursday to direct staff to actively seek opportunities, including potential public-partnerships, in the future. The board has asked for quarterly updates on opportunities.

That decision was a bit of a compromise in the ongoing story of bringing indoor tennis to Reston. Other options on the table - to put it to the citizens in a referendum that would cost $75,000; to discuss the issue again in March and take another look at lowering costs; or to table the issue - which has been discussed in several forms for several years now - indefinitely.

Only one board member - Lake Anne/Tall Oaks Director Ken Knueven, voted to table the issue. The rest agreed on looking for future opportunities. The discussion did not proceed to the point of a vote on going to referendum.

"I would be disappointed if this was tabled indefinitely," said North Point Director Mike Collins. "With that said, I can't support going to referendum at this time. I can't state with any confidence what the real costs will be.  I don’t want to write a blank check. We do have other concerns. Is it worth all the people we are going to upset in the neighborhood? I think there is common ground. There are other ideas out there that we have not looked at." 

By choosing option three of the four choices, Reston can now look towards discussions with developers, who are likely to have recreational proffers as they eye building in Reston in the coming years to coincide with Metro service here in 2013.

"Proffers are the way we have gotten all the other tennis courts and the pools," said RA President Kathleen Driscoll McKee. "Why should this be different?"

Money was a big point of discussion at Thursday's meeting. While the RA studies say the five-court facility to be built over existing courts at Lake Newport would cost $3.8 million, the financial forecasts call for borrowing more than $4 million.

Citizen opponents of the tennis facility have pointed out that the costs over the life of the project could be as high as $10 to $12 million, with no guarantee of making a profit within a few years as financial projections indicate.

However, RA's forecasts also showed that the cost to member households would be only about $5 more in assessments annually.

Knueven said that is important that Reston pay to maintain and improve what it has before committing so much money to a new facility.

"I still believe we have created a product looking for a buyer," he said. "In my world, that is a doomed start. I am open to the potential down the road, with proffers and a better location. Until that happens, I think it is time to put this to bed."

Sridhar Ganesan, chairman of the Reston Tennis Committee, says the outcome was a better alternative than killing the idea altogether. He says he will work with RA to try and get better financing and fundraising alternatives.

Prior to the vote, citizens took one final chance to make their opinions heard in an hour-long public comment session. Many of the speakers had appeared before the board before as the discussion on the current Lake Newport proposal had been going on for over a year.

Speakers were about evenly divided on both sides.

Members of the tennis community spoke of wanting a first-class facility and their weariness of driving to Herndon, Fairfax or other destinations for indoor court time.

"I have been playing 17 years," said one speaker. "You don’t get to be a good tennis player by only playing in good weather. You need to play year round, especially kids."

Mildred Cooper, a mother of a teenage player who recently won the Simon Cup, told the board she spent 10 years driving him to indoor courts in Merrifield.

"He is now driving himself around the beltway to College Park -just so he can maintain his skills," she said.

Opponents, many of them from streets nearby the Lake Newport outdoor courts, mainly said it was too much money to commit to a facility that too few people would use.

"I should say I want an indoor go-kart track," said David Abrahamson, who lives on Woodstock Lane. "I think I probably could get more people to support that if I targeted it to people with young kids."

Nancy Neely, who also lives on Woodstock, has been a vocal opponent of indoor tennis. She said Reston is in an "obvious state of decay" that will affect property values if money is committed toward a referendum, and if that passed, construction of indoor tennis.

"Building the indoor tennis courts is obvious discrimination against 95 percent of Reston residents," she told the board. "It will only benefit 3,000 residents,  but 100 percent will pay for it. ... If the RA board moves forward, it is a blatant misamanagement and misappropriation of dues showing favoritism towards a small amount of residents."