The Indian Wells Tennis Garden is growing to major proportions.

Wider seats are being installed in Stadium 1 where the court is being dropped 28 inches. A new sports bar with 57 television screens is under construction and a new Stadium 3 is scheduled for completion by the 2017 tournament.

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Already tennis' fifth largest tournament in terms of attendance, Indian Wells drew 456,000 fans last March.

Organizers say planned renovations will enable the BNP Paribas Open to surpass both Roland Garros and Wimbledon in total attendance drawing a target goal of about 500,000 fans. That would put the first Masters tournament of the season behind only the US Open and Australian Open in annual attendance.

“Our attendance is very close to beating the French and close to Wimbledon in terms of paying spectators,” Indian Wells CEO Raymond Moore told The Desert Sun. “Our goal is to get to 500,000 people – attendees – and if we hit 500,000, that will be more people than the French and Wimbledon. We’re right there on the cusp."

The stadium 1 court is being lowered by 28 inches, enclosing television camera positions off the court.

Stadium 3 construction will begin at the conclusion of the 2016 tournament house a tennis musuem that will trace the game back to its traditional roots.

"The construction on (Stadium 3) will begin after the 2016 tournament and it will have a very modern tennis museum in it, with a lot of interactive displays—maybe even some virtual reality—combining with the history of the game," Moore told The Desert Sun. "We’re going back as far as Louis the XIV and King Henry the V, who were tennis people and a lot of people don’t know that King Louis XIV built 1,500 real tennis courts in Paris, so we’re going to go back and show that history. One man that really interests me is Rene Lacoste, a French player in the '20s."

Take a sneak peek at the construction in this video.



Photo credit: Christoper Levy