At its July 30 meeting, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to approve plans to convert 80 acres of the Victoria Golf Course in Carson into a sports and education complex.

The Carol Kimmelman Athletic and Academic Campus, which is scheduled to break ground this winter, will include 52 tennis courts, five soccer fields, and an approximately 25,000-square-foot learning center focused on science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines.

The project is named for Carol Kimmelman, a former tennis player and public school teacher who died of ovarian cancer in 2017.  Her husband, former Goldman Sachs executive Doug Kimmelman, donated $40 million to build the campus in her memory, and has helped forge partnerships with the United States Tennis Association Foundation, the LA Galaxy Foundation, and Tiger Woods' TGR Foundation to provide programming.

“With the Kimmelman Campus, our youth will have an amazing opportunity to unlock both their academic and athletic potential, and to learn about perseverance, teamwork, fair play, and other valuable life lessons both on and off the court,” said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas in a news release. “I am thrilled to work with Doug Kimmelman of the Kimmelman Foundation, Tiger Woods of the TGR Foundation, Chris Evert of the USTA Foundation, and others on this incredible public-private partnership.”

The Kimmelman Campus will become the new headquarters of the USTA Southern California Tennis Association, and possibly a West Coast hub of the National Junior Tennis and Learning Program - which serves more than 200,000 youth each year.  

The learning center will be overseen by the TGR Foundation.  

Other offerings of the Kimmelman Campus will include basketball courts, a sprint track, and training turf.

The Victoria Golf Course, built on a former landfill at 340 E. 192nd Street, has historically underperformed relative to other County-owned courses.  In 2017, Victoria generated just $19,407, well short of the average $1.38 million income from other County-owned courses.

The 87 acres that will remain of the course following the construction of the Kimmelman Campus has been set aside for redevelopment by another private entity.  Plenitude Holdings, which operates the golf course, unveiled plans last year to build a sports complex, an indoor skydiving facility, and other facilities on its remaining 87 acres.

Just southwest of the future campus, construction recently began for a 300-unit apartment complex at Del Amo Boulevard and Main Street.