USTA transforms U.S. Open tennis complex into temporary hospital

Danny Zausner, Chief Operating Officer of USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, joins The Final Round to discuss the organization's support of COVID-19 relief, and its recent decision to convert the U.S. Open tennis complex into a temporary hospital.

Video transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Of course, here in the New York City area, we are looking for any spare hospital capacity that we can find or perhaps build in some of the larger structures in this metro area. For more on one of those projects, we're joined now by Danny Zausner. He is the COO of the USTA National Tennis Center. And, Danny, you guys are looking at or are in the process of, I guess, converting some of Arthur Ashe Stadium and some of the complex over there in Flushing to a temporary hospital. Just bring us up to speed on-- on what's happening over there and how you guys got involved in this project.

DANNY ZAUSNER: Well, welcome to the National Tennis Center, Myles. Yeah, we are way past the looking phase at this point. There's a team out there, a company from Texas called SLS, that the city has brought in, and they are building a hospital in our indoor training center. It's a 12-court indoor training center that we use to put program-- public programs on all year-round, and we use it for other purposes during the Open. But for right now, it-- it is a 350-bed hospital, and it'll be up and running at some point next week.

JEN ROGERS: So do you have any sense of what the timeline for this will be? Have they given you any idea? Of course, I mean, we-- we've seen what's happened with Wimbledon, and we're-- we're all tennis fans and-- and know when the US Open comes around. So what is the timeline?

DANNY ZAUSNER: So the timeline right now is-- I mentioned 350 beds. They're going to do that in three installments. They want the first 150 beds up and running for next week, and they hope over the next three weeks all 350-plus beds will be functioning. You know, what we know is that we are a stone's throw from the Elmhurst Hospital, which has really become the epicenter for the virus in the whole city. And we're four miles away, and they want to bring the non-life-threatening COVID patients here.

And we just know that as long as this virus is around, we need to support the community. Everyone's talking about, when is this bubble going to burst? You know, are we looking at two weeks, four weeks? But we're here to support them any which way. We're in April right now. One would like to think that the bubble bursts within 30 days and we can talk about what's on the back end of this. We just don't know that information at this point.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Danny, I've been wondering how you take something like a stadium or a tennis center and-- and turn it into a hospital. I mean, how do you-- like, where do you put people, on center court with the roof overdrawn? Or do you put them in locker rooms or internal spaces? And how do you sterilize things?

DANNY ZAUSNER: You know, so-- so as it relates to Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest tennis stadium in the world, they're-- they're not really looking at that for any of the hospital perspective right now. Our indoor training center has 12 indoor courts. You heard Governor Cuomo mention about 7, 10 days ago he was looking for a million to 2 million square feet of open space. We happen to have 100,000 of it in our indoor training center. So we can't necessarily meet all of their needs, but this 350-plus beds will go a long way.

So it's really about the indoor training center. Actually in Louis Armstrong Stadium, our number two court, that's been turned into a food commissary, where we're putting together about 25,000 meals a day through our food service partner Restaurant Associates. So they're really using the indoor training center and Louis Armstrong Stadium, but not Arthur Ashe Stadium. It's-- listen, it's a big stadium, but it's not really conducive for hospital beds.

MYLES UDLAND: And then, Danny, I guess just thinking about the state of tennis right now in-- in the country and the state of all sports, you know, I know you guys have an initiative trying to get people to play some tennis at home. And I think, you know, in my free time I like to golf, and I think golf and tennis are both sports where you're thinking, well, I'm not that close to someone, I-- I'd like to be able to play it. Certainly, there's-- there's no tennis playing happening here in New York City or hopefully anywhere in the country right now. But what are you guys doing to try to keep the game, you know, relevant for-- for people who are just waiting for those summer months when hopefully they can get back out of the court?

DANNY ZAUSNER: Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up because it's all about Net Generation for us. And if you go to-- anyone, any family, goes to netgeneration.com, on our website, we put all the information in the world about playing with who you're staying with. Really, we don't want people going out to tennis courts. That's not what's in the best interest of the community right now.

But at home, in your house, we've got exercises. There's videos. Go out on your driveway if you've got one. You could do things with your immediate family on the, you know, staying more than six feet apart, and this is where there's some really incredible valuable tools. People need to exercise their brains, they need to exercise their body, and netgeneration.com will help them tremendously with that.

RICK NEWMAN: Danny, the US Open usually in August. When do you have to make a decision if that's on or off? By, what, June or July? Still on for now, right?

DANNY ZAUSNER: Yeah, no, the main draw is August 31. We usually run our qualifying fan week the week before that. You know, we're in April right now. What-- what we're doing right now is we're building the site as if we're going to have a US Open, and we obviously all hope we do. I know the city of New York certainly hopes we do. We're an incredible economic engine for the city, over $800 million a year in economic activity.

We don't want that to go away. Nobody does. So we'll keep building for that. There's no decisions that need to be made in April and probably not even in May, but we'll just keep going and we'll just keep following what's going on. As I've told people, we don't know if we're at the beginning or at the middle right now. We just know we're not at the end for sure.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, Danny Zausner with the National Tennis Center. Thanks so much for the work you guys do, and thanks for joining the program. Hopefully, we'll talk to you soon.

DANNY ZAUSNER: Thank you very much.