World class tennis is coming to the Bronx. A tennis center opening soon in Crotona Park may be the training ground for future stars. NY1’s Erin Clarke filed the following report.

Construction work is just about completed and when it's finished Crotona Park will be home to The Cary Leeds Center for Tennis and Learning.

"A world class tennis and education center for the children of the Bronx and all New York City,” said Deborah MacFarlane Antoine, presidents of New York Junior Tennis and Learning.

The center is named after an internationally-ranked player who devoted his life to teaching children the sport before unexpectedly dying in 2003.

The center will boast 20 public courts available for year-round play, a club house with a library, classrooms, a community room and two exhibition courts with seating for 1,000 spectators.

"This should be a training ground with 22 courts and some good instruction that maybe some future champions will be born here in the Bronx,” said Lawrence Leeds, Cary’s father.

That's the idea, offering New Yorkers, especially those in the Bronx a place to learn and play a sport they may not have otherwise.

"It's an area where we have tremendous need and kids don't always have a lot of opportunities that maybe they would if they lived in other places,” said Larry Scoones, chief of operations for the Parks Department in the Bronx.

The center that hopes to draw national and international professional tournaments will occupy 127-acres of city land is a partnership between the Parks Department and New York Junior Tennis and Learning, an organization with a mission to develop the character of young people through tennis and education.

It's the second and largest tennis concession in the borough.

Construction of The Cary Leeds Tennis and Learning Center cost $26.5 million. That included renovation of Crotona Park's 20 existing tennis courts. The city foot $16 million while NYJTL paid the rest and is handling construction of the clubhouse and the third phase which includes the exhibition courts.

All with as little impact to the park as possible.

"It's all been dug into the ground. So what you’re looking at, what appears to be a one-story building is in fact a two-story building,” said Peter Gluck, architect and construction manager.

The clubhouse will officially open on June 15 and a year after that the stadium exhibition courts will open too.