La Center’s four new pickleball courts at Heritage Park opened Friday, May 22, following months of weather delays, landscaping work and final striping, meeting the city’s goal of opening before Summer.
The courts, adjacent to the park’s basketball court, were built as part of a parks plan first developed in 2007. Public Works and Community Development Director Tracy Coleman said the city updated the plan this year as local demand for pickleball increased.
“It’s always been in the park plan for sports courts at that park, and so they had never been developed due to budgetary reasons,” Coleman said. “So, when we were looking at our park plan update two years ago, we realized that there was ... a high demand for pickleball courts, and the pickleballers were taking over the (Holley Park) tennis courts.”
The courts were designed to be flexible to the city’s long-term needs, according to Coleman. While they are currently striped for pickleball, Coleman said the asphalt surface can be converted in the future for other sports such as tennis, basketball, volleyball, badminton or futsal. The four pickleball courts are sized for normal play, 30 feet by 60 feet.
“We wanted to make sure that those courts could be converted as a true sports court to other types of activities if pickleball dies down, as racquetball has in the past years,” she said.
The city planned to finish the project earlier, but the weather delayed the final leveling and painting until spring, Coleman said.
“The challenge to meet the deadline is weather,” she said. “So we had to wait for it to dry up so we could level it, and then we had to wait for the leveling to dry, to be able to paint it, and then put the stripes on, and then the nets and so on.”
The project cost about $42,500, according to Coleman. That included $20,300 for asphalt, $16,200 for fencing and $6,000 for leveling, striping, irrigation and landscaping.
Coleman said the city saved money by training its own employees to handle resurfacing and striping instead of hiring contractors.
“We trained them, we did some research, and so our (employees) are the ones who actually did the leveling, the painting and the striping,” she said.
She estimated the city saved more than $50,000 by performing resurfacing work in-house across several park courts rather than outsourcing each project.
Despite pickleball’s current popularity, the courts’ proximity to residential homes has prompted some community concerns about pickleball noise. Last July, the City of Battle Ground opened six pickleball courts in Kiwanis Park. Though the courts proved popular, neighbors have since complained about noise and play past the allowed hours.
Coleman noted that the city installed shrubs and trees around the courts to help absorb sound and intentionally avoided covered-court designs that can amplify noise.
“Battle Ground has a different type of sports court system,” Coleman said, referring to Battle Ground’s metal roof above its pickleball courts. “They’re covered, which causes more of an echo because it has a covered surface on it. Ours is open air, open fencing.”
Coleman stated that the city has bought a decibel reader and has not measured sound levels exceeding 85 decibels, the threshold considered dangerous for human ears, at the site so far.
The courts are open during standard park hours, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., or from dusk to dawn, whichever comes first, in line with La Center’s noise ordinance, according to Coleman.
Pickleball has already proven popular in La Center, with residents playing on the courts even before the official opening, while final striping and fencing were incomplete.
“We even had people utilizing it when we were putting the fencing up,” she said. “Our fencing contractor worked around people who were playing on the courts while they were installing fencing.”
Coleman said the new courts should provide residents with another way to stay active as summer begins.
“I’m hoping that the community is appreciative of different options that we’ve given them for activities within our city,” she said.
Coleman said there are currently no plans for a ribbon-cutting or opening ceremony.
