Contrary to popular belief, pickleball is not the fastest-growing sport in the world. That honor belongs to a sport most Americans have never heard of called padel. However, it is the fastest growing sport in the U.S.
That growth has not come without pain and conflict as many courts once reserved only for tennis are being repurposed as “multi-use” spaces that can handle both sports which has left a lot of tennis players feeling frozen out.
The sport is popular enough that additional courts dedicated to pickleball were one of the top requests in a survey of Boulder City residents about capital project spending for city parks.
In its meeting of Dec. 12, the city council took a big step toward granting that request as they nearly quadrupled funding for courts to a total of more than $586,000.
An additional $426,000 in federal funding from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was, at the request of staff, reallocated from several other already-approved uses to provide funding for four dedicated pickleball courts located at Veterans’ Memorial Park
“One of the notions behind ARPA funding was that parks were over-utilized during the pandemic,” said City Manager Taylour Tedder. “So this is a way to invest in our parks. Earlier this year we did have a meeting with local pickleball players — nearly 40 of them — where we evaluated between a modular court and an acrylic court and the acrylic court is evidently the way to go.”
The funding, all approved in July of 2022, had been earmarked to go to a variety of uses. An alley maintenance program was slated to get $200,000. Another $125,000 had been put aside for a program to support home repairs for local homeowners and another $100,000 was supposed to go for providing broadband access in city buildings.
According to the report from staff, in the ensuing time, priorities had changed or the aims have been met via “other means.” Combined with about $1,200 left over from other, already completed, ARPA-funded projects (Boulder City got a total of more than $21 million in ARPA funding), that left $426,000 for pickleball.
Does this mean some of the multi-use (i.e., formerly tennis only) courts will go back to being just tennis courts?
“My plan would be both to get the feedback from the Parks and Recreation Commission on that but we would be able to, as we’re resurfacing them, transition some of those back to solely tennis,” Tedder said.
According to outgoing Parks and Recreation Director Roger Hall, a parks master plan is being worked on and it will come before the council after the first of the year. As part of developing that plan, the commission recommended that there be an increase in facilities for both pickleball and horseshoes.
Councilmember Steve Walton addressed the large (aquatic) elephant in the room. “At first blush,” he said, “I think, ‘well there’s a half a million dollars, let’s put that toward the pool’ as we’re passing the jar in so many ways to try to find money for that. So, for me, it becomes a matter of how do we prioritize the use of [funds]?”
In the end, Walton said that the fact that this request was part of a larger master plan gave him more confidence in approving it rather than seeing the funding funneled toward the proposed replacement for Boulder City’s aging public pool.
On questioning from mayor pro tempore Sherri Jorgensen, Hall explained the difference between the proposed dedicated courts and the facilities already available at other city parks.
“ABC Park, for example. We have a big metal crate with a lock on it,” Hall said. “If you would like to play pickleball there, you have to open the lock, get the net out, set up the net, play on it and then put the net back in and lock up the box. At Broadbent Park, we don’t have the boxes there. The nets are already put together. But after you play you have to drag them off to the sides of the tennis courts because we do have a tennis group that plays down there as well. On the dedicated courts, the nets would be fixed into the court itself and you wouldn’t have to take them down and put them up.”
According to Hall, on questioning from Walton about conflicts between tennis players and pickleball players, the city intends to keep the current multi-use courts available for both tennis and pickleball but anticipates that, if there are dedicated courts for pickleball, that players and enthusiasts will migrate toward those. This would allow the city to, when it is time to resurface the courts at Broadbent Park, return those to being solely tennis courts.
About that survey. The No. 1 request, by far, was not pickleball. It was a new aquatics facility.
At the end of the discussion, Jorgensen noted that this was the last city council meeting for Hall, who is retiring after 46 years working for Parks and Recreation. “I’ll be around,” he said. “Call me if you need me.”
Alluding to the fact that Hall is a pickleball player himself, Jorgensen said that they hoped to see him on the new courts. “I’ll be there,” he answered.