Waterworks Park in Fairfield has a court complex that looks brand new from the parking lot: repaved tennis and pickleball courts in blue and green, freshly striped basketball courts with eight new goals, and new vinyl-coated fencing and gates. Prodigy renovated the complex for the City of Fairfield in 2024 through the TOP-C cooperative contract, keeping the fence posts and rails that were still sound and spending the budget on what wears out: the surface, the equipment and the fence fabric.
When the city decided partway through to add crack repair under the new asphalt and to stripe the basketball courts instead of color-coating them, the changes went through the same contract without starting over. For a city or park district with worn courts, Waterworks Park shows how far a renovation can go without a full rebuild.
Waterworks Park in Fairfield has a court complex that looks brand new from the parking lot: repaved tennis and pickleball courts in blue and green, freshly striped basketball courts with eight new goals, and new vinyl-coated fencing and gates. Prodigy renovated the complex for the City of Fairfield in 2024 through the TOP-C cooperative contract, keeping the fence posts and rails that were still sound and spending the budget on what wears out: the surface, the equipment and the fence fabric.
When the city decided partway through to add crack repair under the new asphalt and to stripe the basketball courts instead of color-coating them, the changes went through the same contract without starting over. For a city or park district with worn courts, Waterworks Park shows how far a renovation can go without a full rebuild.
Technical Discussion
Re-skinning a fence instead of replacing it
A chain link fence around a court complex is two different products that age at different rates. The framework, meaning the posts and rails, is heavy steel set in concrete, and most of it outlives several surfaces. The fabric is the part that sags, rusts, gets cut, and takes the hits from balls, mowers and people leaning on it. A full fence replacement pays to pull and reset sound posts in order to replace the part that actually failed.
Figure 1: New fabric on the existing framework, with new and refurbished gates.
What stayed and what was replaced
At Waterworks Park the framework stayed. The rails were taken down so the paving and coating crews could work, then reinstalled, and posts were replaced only where they were bent. The existing rails, posts and brackets were media-blasted and painted by a separate contractor, and damaged stretcher bars, clamps and support rails were replaced. Every foot of fabric came down and new fabric went up: about 830 linear feet at 10 feet tall and about 360 linear feet at 6 feet.
What "8 gauge, vinyl-dipped" means
Chain link gauge is easy to misread on a coated product. Polymer-coated fabric under ASTM F668 is usually described by its finished size, so an 8-gauge vinyl-coated fabric is typically a 9-gauge steel core, 0.148 inch in diameter, with the coating bringing it to 8-gauge overall. The core is what carries the load; the vinyl is what keeps it from rusting and gives the fence its color. A fabric quoted as 9 gauge coated may have a lighter 11-gauge core, 0.120 inch, so it is worth asking which number a quote is describing.
Height, and the gates
Ten feet is the common height for tennis enclosures because it keeps balls in play areas and out of the parking lot. Lower fabric works where the fence is a boundary rather than a backstop. The gate plan changed as much as the fabric did: the turnstile came out, two walk gates were refurbished, five new walk gates went in, and a double drive gate now lets maintenance and resurfacing equipment onto the courts without taking a section of fence apart. A walk gate can also be part of an accessible route; a turnstile cannot.
When a fence looks worn, check the posts before pricing a replacement. If they are straight and solid in their footings, new fabric, hardware and gates restore most of the value for a fraction of the disruption.
