It’s the spring of 2026. The cherry trees recently bloomed again at the LEGACY Center. Thirty-five of them line the property, planted 20 years ago thanks to a donation from the Japanese American Society. For LEGACY to receive this improbable gift, someone on the board got an idea. A phone call was made. And then another. A connection was leveraged, then another. And after considerable effort, a row of young trees took root on seven acres of parkland along Ridge Avenue in East Falls. This October marks 20 years since the LEGACY Center opened its doors. Twenty years of kids learning forehands and backhands, building discipline and confidence on the court, and carrying those lessons into every other part of their lives.
Today, Legacy Youth Tennis and Education serves thousands of young people across Philadelphia, and the Center’s courts are the beating heart of it all. But none of it was inevitable. The story of how this building came to exist is one of vision, stubbornness, generosity, and an improbable number of phone calls.
LEGACY’s origins trace back to 1952, when a group of volunteers led by Bill Clothier formed the Philadelphia Tennis Patrons Association. For years, the organization focused on supporting promising junior players, helping cover costs like travel to national tournaments and providing weekly court time at indoor facilities.
In 1983, a pivotal shift occurred. A small indoor tennis facility in Manayunk that couldn’t be sold was instead donated, and suddenly the organization had a physical home of its own. It was modest, and it leaked, but it was theirs. Programs grew, and with them, demand. Before long, the Manayunk facility was bursting at the seams. Kids were being turned away because there simply wasn’t enough space. And in a colder climate like Philadelphia, young players couldn’t train year-round without access to expensive indoor clubs. If the organization wanted to serve all kids, it needed a larger facility.
Bob Swift came to the organization in 1986 with a deep personal connection to tennis. He had started playing at age 11, the same year his father died. His mother worked as a secretary to support three boys, and the family didn’t have much. Swift played tennis at the Idle Hour Tennis Club in Drexel Hill where he maintained its 14 clay courts while in high school. “We could not afford tennis lessons, so I learned to play tennis from the backboard and watching other players,” he says. He turned out to be good at it, playing number one on the Haverford College tennis team for four years, and was later inducted into three athletic halls of fame, including the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Hall of Fame.
“I figured things out on my own,” he says. “I never really had a mentor. I never had a teacher in high school or college who took me aside and said, ‘You have the skills. I want to see you advance.’ I could have done a lot more if I had.”
After serving in the Army in Vietnam and receiving a law degree from NYU Law School, he joined the Philadelphia law firm, which now bears his name.
He built a formidable legal career in complex international litigation, including precedent-setting cases for human rights victims in the Philippines and Holocaust survivors. His skills as a lawyer would later prove essential in navigating the Center’s most complex negotiations.
Swift joined the board at the urging of his law firm’s leader, Harold Kohn. “He called me in and said, ‘They’ve asked me for a contribution. I’m going to make one, but on condition that you get involved,’” Swift remembers.
He threw himself into the work. As head of the Operations Committee starting in 1991, then later as Board President, he hired tennis professionals, developed programming, and implemented policies to ensure that children whose families couldn’t otherwise afford tennis instruction would still have access. He oversaw two name changes (first to Philadelphia Youth Tennis, and later to Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education) and helped organize a merger with the local chapter of the National Junior Tennis League, bringing in a substantial summer training program at playgrounds across the City.
But Swift had been thinking even bigger. In 1993, he wrote a formal memo to the board proposing an indoor and outdoor tennis complex that could support year-round programming. At that point, the organization had no site in mind, no secured funding, and no consensus.
Early design work began after Swift’s presidency, but the financial ground shifted quickly. A major pledge tied to the tech sector collapsed when the dot-com bubble burst. Leadership transitions added further uncertainty, and a real question took hold among board members: could this organization actually pull off building a new center? At a packed board meeting with more than 30 members present, the room was sharply divided. The executive director at the time argued that a new facility would be a mistake. Several respected board members, including some of Swift’s friends, spoke against it.
Swift took a different view. He argued that a highly developed, year-round center would strengthen community programs by creating a hub for training, character development, and access.
“I was a strong proponent of it,” he says. “I said, ‘This is the future.’”
By a small margin the board supported building a new center, however efforts continued to stall and regroup.
In 2002, the board asked Swift to return as Board Chairman. He agreed, with one condition: “My goal is to build a tennis center.”
Skeptics asked for one assurance—that NJTL’s summer program sites would not suffer while the Center was being built. Swift gave his word.
Swift, a convert to Quakerism, brought that tradition into the boardroom. He replaced Robert’s Rules of Order with consensus-based decision-making. If the group couldn’t agree, they tabled the issue and returned to it later. He also embraced the Quaker concept of “standing aside,” allowing dissenting members to let the group proceed without forcing a vote.
He encouraged brevity as well. “After 30 seconds, people are going to tune you out.”
The approach helped move forward the project’s many decisions.
Several sites were considered across Philadelphia. One near 45th and Market was too small. A Presbyterian home in the City Line area presented complications. Eventually, attention turned to a nine-acre parcel in Fairmount Park at the site of the former Gustine Lake, where a deteriorating recreation center sat mostly unused.
Fairmount Park had never leased land on this scale. The only precedent was a smaller, 2-acre lease with Saint Joseph’s University for its boathouse. The Park Commission viewed the tennis organization as a relatively small group and wasn’t convinced it could raise the necessary funds.
Swift volunteered to handle the challenging negotiations.
Park Commissioner Jim Bloom noted that in earlier talks, the sides had been at an impasse. The Commission wanted two seats on the organization’s board and were told they could only have one. Swift quickly responded: “I’ll give you four board seats.”
Bloom paused. “Well, maybe this will work out after all.”
And just like that, Bloom and Swift found common ground.
After two years of negotiation, City Council approved an 80-year lease at $1 per year. In return, LEGACY would build and operate the tennis center, maintain the grounds, and construct a new community recreation center for East Falls.
Construction proved to be a gauntlet.
Part of the site sat in a floodplain, requiring 40 truckloads of soil from a New Jersey excavation project to raise it to code. A major stormwater culvert ran beneath the property, limiting where courts could be placed. Fairmount Park required masonry construction rather than the less expensive steel-frame structures used for most indoor tennis facilities, adding significant cost.
Even the plans themselves required correction. At one point, the outdoor courts were designed to slope in the wrong direction—away from the river instead of toward it. The mistake was caught before construction, but it underscored how little margin for error the project allowed.
Swift heaps praise on the board members who, as volunteers, oversaw construction and demanded high quality work. Artis Ore, a professional engineer, served as the owner’s representative at weekly construction meetings. Bob Brasler, a prominent real estate developer, attended alongside him. Executive Director Scott Tharp, hired in 2002, managed day-to-day operations while learning in real time what it meant to fundraise for a $13 million capital project.
“They all thought alike,” Swift says. “There was genuine camaraderie.”
And throughout the process, programming never slowed. The commitment made to the summer camp sites during board debates held.
The $13 million project came together through a combination of public investment and private philanthropy. To secure support from major foundations, the board first had to demonstrate that the City and the Commonwealth were already committed. It was a high-stakes game of funding dominoes, with each piece needing to fall into place to convince the next.
Key contributions included $2 million from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, along with leadership gifts from Dennis Alter, the namesake for the Pavilion, and Bill and Laura Buck, for whom the Buck Lounge is named. Board member Fred Shabel and his network of tennis partners contributed over a million dollars collectively.
When the donor wall was unveiled at the grand opening on April 28, 2006, it listed nearly 200 names.
“It takes a village,” Swift says. “That’s how this all came together.”
Throughout the years of planning, negotiating, and building, the organization never slowed its programming. Each summer, roughly 2,000 tennis rackets, donated by Dennis Alter, were distributed to children who earned them by attending sessions regularly and demonstrating they could hit both a forehand and a backhand. Only then could they take the racket home.
When Bob Swift talks about this, his voice catches a little. He pictures a child bursting through the door with a racket in hand, proudly announcing: “Hey, Mom, this is mine!”
It’s a small moment. But it contains everything behind what was built.
In 2006, the doors of the center officially opened. The organization that had started in 1952 with a few volunteers helping junior players finally had a home worthy of its mission.
When asked what he hopes for the next 20 years, Swift doesn’t talk about trophies or rankings. He talks about sustainability, about ensuring the organization remains strong so that resources can continue to flow to programming. He describes the tennis court as an equalizer.
“On the tennis court, you have kids from all different backgrounds,” he says. “They all get along. They all respect each other.”
For Swift, the building represents something larger than bricks and mortar. It is a place where the mentorship he never had can exist for others.
Two decades later, the cherry trees have grown tall, and the building has become what its founders believed it could be: not just a facility, but a home.
This fall, Legacy Youth Tennis and Education will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the LEGACY Center at the annual Benefit Gala on Saturday, October 24, 2026.
© 2026 Legacy Youth Tennis & Education.
A 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.
Federal Identification Number (EIN): 23-1747032.
