Ribbon cutting ceremonies for Claxton Field and Needham High School’s new tennis courts will be bumped to the end of August/beginning of September. The Park & Recreation Commission decided on the delay during their June 22 meeting, to enable all relevant parties to be present.
After the planned-for June 5 date was derailed by the arrest of former Park & Rec chair Chris Gerstel on charges of alleged fraud, director Stacey Mulroy said she hoped to schedule the ceremonies before people left town for July 4 celebrations. “If we don’t hit that, we may push it off till September, just because we’re not going to get everybody we want to get.”
Although the tennis courts were completed in December 2025, their ribbon cutting was delayed due to interdepartmental scheduling conflicts. “There was just a lot going on in the winter, and we wanted to make sure we gave it its due diligence and not kind of rush it,” Mulroy said.
“Then what we wanted to do was piggyback the Claxton ribbon cutting, which was delayed this spring — it wasn’t delayed, it wasn’t as pretty as we wanted it to be,” she noted to the Commission. “It turned brown quickly, and we wanted to get it back up to speed.”
Mulroy added that scheduling two ceremonies on the same day would be simpler for individuals involved in both.
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