By Lesley Wright
The Arizona Republic
Last year, Mark Coronado sat in a Vancouver sports bar when a television ad for the PowerShares tennis championships flashed the names of the host cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit — and Surprise, Ariz.
It was a fleeting but satisfying thrill for Coronado, the recreation director for Surprise. The city is the latest Phoenix suburb to decide that it’s OK for city coffers to lose money to boost municipal fame, even though Surprise is coping with tight budget constraints.
This month, John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova played at the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex, which the city built for $7.4 million in 2007. The tennis event has cost the city $245,000 in subsidies and losses over five years.
Surprise may reap long-term benefits as millions of viewers watch the Cancer Treatment Centers of America Tennis Championships rebroadcasts. But in the near-term, the city has struggled financially after internal audits uncovered years of unrelated accounting missteps.
Ultimately, Surprise officials decided the tournament’s publicity was worth the price.
