By Soumya Gupta, CHS Intern
Seattle Parks is responding to surging noise complaints from neighbors around the city’s most popular pickleball courts including Capitol Hill’s Miller Playfield with plans for a new noise-blocking fence. But the department is also scrambling to do more to try to cut down noise from the pandemic-era past time.
While rigorous pickleball matches are happening on courts across the city, the complaints have been centered on three specific Seattle Parks facilities.
“The noise complaints have been coming in for about a year now,” a Seattle Parks and Recreation representative said. “They’re exclusively from neighbors of Miller, Magnolia and Laurelhurst parks.”
To take a swing at the problem, Seattle Parks has devised a noise-reduction project to maintain the status of pickleball in courts, while also doing more to help make sure the game is played within a certain disciplinary framework.
At Miller, the parks department has planned the installation of an Acoustifence which would block out the noise coming from the pickleball courts. The plan includes installing a sound-proof barrier that would minimise most of the noise which would surround the court.
“The goal is to install them in the fall, or at least by the end of this year”, the department spokesperson said.
The new fences are planned for Miller and Laurelhurst.
CHS is following up with Parks to obtain an estimate of the budget for the project. The solution is typically relatively low-cost compared to more substantial projects. The material runs around $750 per 30-foot roll.
CHS reported here last fall as Miller completed a $50,000 overhaul to resurface the courts for the booming sport.
Acoustifence to the rescue? (Image: USA Pickleball Association)
There are around 80 outdoor courts lined for pickleball across Seattle where ambassadors help organize games and some of the city’s community centers now offer indoor courts. The Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Lifelong Recreation Program recruited the pickleball “ambassadors,” volunteers who help organize play “and make the sport safe, fun and educational at several locations throughout the city.” The program is funded by the Seattle Park District.
But the booming sport has also brought a boom in complaints about the pop-pop-pop of the game. The New York Times reported in late June on “a nationwide scourge of unneighborly clashes, petitions, calls to the police and lawsuits” that have surrounded pickleball’s growth.
“Without any engagement from the neighboring community the department designated the courts to be for pickle-ball,” one complaint email sent to Seattle Parks and shared by the neighbor with CHS reads. “The games begin at 6AM and go non stop until the lights go out at 10PM (sometimes the players stay longer if it is a bright night) 7 days a week. We get no respite for the constant “thwack” of the ball and at times there can be 6 games played at once – that’s a lot of repetitive noise that can penetrate closed double paned windows.”
In addition to the new fencing material at Miller, Seattle Parks and Recreation is telling neighbors it is also looking to introduce shortened hours of play for pickleball, along with exploring alternate materials for paddles and balls. The department says it is also making plans to connect with local pickleball associations to discuss better, respectful, and hopefully quieter court etiquette.
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There’s a typo, it costed 50,000 not half a million
Thanks
soo someone really did say to them sell after checking the list of things the city needs to work on… scrolling passed the drug use, people in crisis, filth, graffiti, nope none of that as important as some rich aholes in montlake complaining about the sounds of sport coming from a park… our priorities are so on point.
Could it be that Seattle Parks painted itself in a corner on this one?
Seattle Parks has spent the last seven years painting pickleball court lines on the least used (and often most decrepit) tennis courts, without giving any consideration to their proximity to housing. Their main worry is to not inconvenience the tennis players. Never mind the rest. Case in point: last summer they painted pickleball court lines on the Gilman Playfield tennis courts which are less than 20 feet away from some residences. Their “2021-2022 Outdoor Pickleball Study” shows no change of direction.
But let’s get back to Miller. Why are so many people congregating on the Miller courts to play pickleball?
Until very recently, Seattle Parks has had very little interest in providing rollable pickleball nets. So little that of the thirty-one rollable pickleball nets available today, it only bought four. As a result, Seattle has many more “court lines” without a pickleball net, than courts with a pickleball net. It so happens that pickleball players seem to prefer to gather where nets are readily available. Each of the four Miller pickleball courts has a net, which makes Miller a prime pickleball location.
Because Seattle Parks has been focused on disrupting tennis play as little as possible, it has been adamant for several years that it could only paint light green pickleball lines on darker green tennis courts. After a few years of begging by pickleball players, Seattle Parks started painting blue pickleball lines, which is better than green but not great. Last year, Seattle Parks finally agreed to paint yellow pickleball lines on the Miller pickleball courts as a “pilot”. Every pickleball player will tell you that the yellow are much more visible. Each of the four Miller pickleball courts has yellow pickleball lines and this too makes Miller a prime pickleball location.
Finally, the four Miller pickleball courts serve a large area of Seattle that is relatively densely populated. They are also the closest outdoor pickleball courts with pickleball nets for people living or visiting downtown. Because there are no other pickleball courts available within several miles, those are the most conveniently accessible courts for hundreds of players. This makes for people playing at all hours and for big crowds of people waiting to play. If Seattle Parks would make other locations available nearby, the noise and the crowds could be managed better. But while the number of pickleball players grows exponentially, Seattle Parks is only making incremental progress. This summer it will be painting lines for six more pickleball courts in West Seattle. It will not paint new pickleball court lines anywhere else in Seattle.
At a recent community meeting about Seattle Parks’ upcoming 6-year “Parks, Recreation and Open Space Plan”, their Senior Planning and Development Specialist in charge of the plan purportedly expressed concerns that pickleball could be a fad, and therefore it would not make sense for Seattle Parks to make long-term investments in pickleball. Meanwhile Miller is exploding.
Should we talk about the overflowing Green Lake or Walt Hundley courts next?
So the city is just getting right on all these complaints from our parks in the wealthier parts of town for (checking my notes here) the sounds of plastic paddles hitting balls during normal park hours… 🙄
Pour one out for the neighbors of Miller, Laurelhurst, and Magnolia parks.
Get these pickleball losers off our tennis courts!
Non athletes belong in theiir basement playing ping pong.
Pickleball has severely limited court availability for tennis players. To see the city now spending money to appease older, wealthier, whiter residents — including the players themselves, is a bit of a slap in the face.
A slap in the face to who? Has tennis been a historically diverse sport? Is pickleball less diverse? More?