Pickleball continued from page 10 people report fi nding community in ways they hadn’t before. But what makes the sport uniquely suited to building those relation- ships? Some say the key is in the game itself. “It’s really geared toward playing with many different partners,” Copeland says. “Instead of two people on a court, there’s four people on a court and you’re switching around.” Rugby referee Nelson agrees, explaining that with the partner system, you’re always communicating — even if it’s just discussions doesn’t understand why the department won’t add more courts. There’s plenty of space, he points out, and it wouldn’t be more costly than replacing the tennis court. That’s true, acknowledges Scott Gilm- ore, deputy executive director of Parks and Recreation. The total budget for the project, including Americans With Disabilities Act improvements, is $1.6 million, he says, and the cost of resurfacing each court is about $400,000 — whether the new court becomes one tennis court or four pickleball courts. Many of the city’s tennis courts were built in the 1970s and 1980s and contain asbestos, of the tennis community and its relationship with the USTA with the desire for more pickleball courts. That USTA relationship is also the reason that the department can’t stripe pickleball courts over tennis courts, another suggested solution. The USTA won’t allow league play on courts with additional striping. In a public statement to tennis centers earlier this year, the USTA said that the only lines acceptable on a tennis court are those for smaller tennis courts. “No additional lines (permanent or temporary) may be on a court to be used for USTA-sanctioned play,” it warned. Sam Hitman, longtime manager of Gates Tennis Center, sympathizes with the diffi cul- ties that the parks department faces. Gates started with four pickleball courts striped over its kids’ courts; this year, it decided to convert one of its tennis courts into four pickleball courts, so it now has eight courts. Anyone can reserve a court and pay the $5-per-hour fee to play, or attend scheduled open play that doesn’t require a reservation and costs $6. “We’re lucky enough to have so much land Congress Park pickleball players have formed a community. about who will hit the ball or what the plan is for the next point. The community transcends age. Thirty- year-old Matt Green often brings his ele- mentary-school-aged cousin, Dave, to play at Congress Park. Dave says he admires the skills of the older picklers, describing how his favorites are able to jump like frogs despite their age. And Green appreciates the fact that he got his job as a wine and spirits salesman through connections he made on the pickleball court. But while the community is strong, the sport’s success has created a problem: The city doesn’t have enough pickleball courts. The pickle at Congress Park The way Nelson sees it, Denver Parks and Recreation is “putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound” when it comes to meeting the demand for pickleball courts across the city, especially at Congress Park. Next year, because of noise complaints 12 from neighbors, the department plans to move the four Congress Park courts from the eastern edge of the park, near Detroit Street, to the interior of the park, where the western-most tennis court will be resurfaced and turned into four pickleball courts. When Congress Park picklers heard about the relocation, they immediately ques- tioned why the plan didn’t include adding courts. Nelson and Li reached out to the department, asking for at least four more courts. Their bucket list calls for sixteen, but they see eight as the minimum number that’s acceptable. While Nelson likes the fact that the re- location will move the courts to a spot with lights, allowing evening play, he says he he notes, so the department takes extra pre- cautions when resurfacing courts in order to protect the environment, and the people, by removing the hazardous fi bers. After trying to communicate with the parks department in an experience he lik- ens to The Shawshank Redemption’s Andy Dufresne sending endless letters asking for more funding for the prison library, Nelson says he fi nally received a response saying that the plan was to proceed with four courts and nothing more. He felt like they might as well have said, “Just take your gruel and go be happy that you’re getting four new courts,” he says. But while the current plan is to create four new pickleball courts to replace the existing ones, Gilmore says the department hasn’t ruled out the possibility of adding additional courts — including potentially transitioning the basketball court into pickleball courts. Efforts to switch out tennis courts en- counter an unusual hurdle: To be eligible for league play, the United States Tennis Association requires six courts at a location. League play is the only play that counts toward offi cial rankings and national quali- fi cation, so tennis players need to participate in league-sanctioned tournaments if they want a chance at national championships. Congress Park currently has seven tennis courts, so it can only replace one with pick- leball courts if it wants to remain within USTA limits. Denver maintains 144 tennis courts across the city, many of which have existed for over thirty years. While people campaign- ing for more pickleball courts point out that city tennis courts frequently go unused while people wait to play pickleball, Gilmore says that the department has to balance the needs that we have dedicated pickleball courts and dedicated tennis courts,” Hitman says, “so that’s really not a problem for Gates specifi - cally, but it really affects the smaller clubs.” Gilmore says that the department will try to add more pickleball courts whenever it can, but it wants to be sure there are courts spread across the city so that everyone has access to the sport, not just those in a specifi c area. Altreuter says he doesn’t mind driving to get to other courts. But while the courts at Martin Luther King Jr. park are “beautiful,” he points out that he has to arrange a group with the right number of players for the experience there to be as fun as it is at Congress Park. “It’s not just that Congress Park is right down the street from me,” Altreuter adds. the game much louder than do tennis’s softer balls and stringed racquets, and residents complain about the sounds. Anywhere the city builds new courts, Gilmore says, impacts ranging from noise to parking are a concern. Denver’s parks department has received so many noise complaints about pickleball at both Congress Park and Eisenhower Park (though the complaints there are mainly from one person who claims to be part of a regis- tered neighborhood organization that does not exist, Gilmore says) that both parks have limited pickleball hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. At other parks, the players are merely limited by park hours, which stretch from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. One resident who lives near a pickleball court says that when he moved to his current home, tennis courts were the only racquet sport at the park. Now there are pickleball courts, and that game is much louder. “It’s a great sport, and from what we can see, it’s enjoyed by people of all ages and gets people out and moving,” says the resident, who asked to remain anonymous. “I’d have to say, though, in residential areas, it’s the wrong location.” He’s measured the noise level in his backyard while people play pickleball and says it can reach 70 decibels, comparable to traffi c noise. The difference, he adds, is that traffi c’s whoosh becomes white noise over time, while pickleball’s noise comes from constant plonks and jarring thwacks. The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment generally lists 55 decibels during the day and 50 at night as the maxi- mum allowable noise, the resident points out. But according to Gilmore, park rangers have offi cially measured noise at the property line of several homes near pickleball courts, and those measurements have never exceeded the noise ordinance. Gilmore also notes that plenty of other park activities — from Picklers stack their paddles to reserve games at Congress Park. “People come from Lakewood and Aurora, all over the city, to play in Congress Park. And the reason that they go there — it’s not because it’s the closest court. It’s because that’s where the players are.” Arbeli points out that Congress Park is close to Capitol Hill, which has long been considered the city’s most densely populated neighborhood, so courts there serve a large proportion of the population. But the density of the neighborhood creates another challenge for the department: Pickle- ball’s hard paddles and whiffl e-style balls make workers mowing lawns to people cheering for their children during football and soccer games — can be loud, too. He says he tries to be understanding about neighbors’ concerns, but noise is part of living near a park, and people know that when they move nearby. The resident who lives near the pickleball courts agrees that the family was prepared for tennis and general park noise when they moved in, and says that was even part of the appeal. But the pickleball noise is constant rather than occasional, and his family and some of their neigh- continued on page 15 DECEMBER 2-8, 2021 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com MARC NELSON MARC NELSON
