Request for a Pickleball court
Happy Monday everyone!
As a board, we are always on the lookout for new ways to improve the property. This year, one of our residents asked that we explore adding a pickleball court since we are upgrading our tennis courts. After many discussions and consultations with outside parties, we wanted to share back where we landed.
First some context
We are operating with a very lean budget and do not have money earmarked for the addition of new amenities. So outside of raising new revenue via an assessment (which would be incredibly difficult), we don’t have a lot to play with.
The tennis court resurfacing and upgrades are something we are only able to achieve because of our board president’s vision and hard work - Andy was able to negotiate a barter deal to get our courts resurfaced FOR FREE in exchange for use of the third court by a tennis instructor who will use the court to give lessons. In addition, he negotiated reduced rates for lessons for community members. This dramatically improves the amenity and impacts our property value.
With the above in mind, this means we have no new money and 2 courts available for general play which, pardon the pun, could leave us in a pickle if our community has more tennis players than pickleball players. However, we still explored what it would take to convert a court into pickleball.
While there are a few different ways to execute this - some more costly than others - as we reached out to various external parties and communities with similar experience, they all universally advised against placing a pickleball court next to a tennis court due to the significant noise generated by pickleball play.
This issue has been well documented in the news. Many developments dealing with this issue have built sound-dampening/soundproof walls around their pickleball courts to compensate for the added noise. However, we don’t have the ability (or money) to execute that approach right now.
So our plan in this first year is to focus on substantially upgrading the tennis courts to be their best (again, for free) and look to build pickleball sometime in the future when we have the demand and we can put that money in the budget to build the amenity in a manner that will be acceptable to all.
Thank you,
Marc Appel, on behalf of the board