We have made lots of progress with 80+ supporters attending the last meeting. We want to see 100+ supporters this time. Please come and help to create a regional pickleball facility!
Attend Public Engagement Meeting #3 for Bellevue Airfield Park Master Plan Update. Your presence at this meeting is crucial in getting 16 dedicated pickleball courts, and the possibility of having a roof over these outdoor courts at the Airfield Park.
In-person only. No virtual option. Registration not required. Open to anyone who lives, works or plays in Bellevue. You don’t have to be a Bellevue resident to attend.
All are welcome to submit an application for consideration.
The City of Seattle is committed to promoting diversity in the city’s boards and commissions. Women, persons with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, young persons, senior citizens, persons of color, and immigrants are encouraged to apply.
All you have to do for now is fill out the application form. Easy! Under “Which Boards would you like to apply for?” select “Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners”. If you need help with “What is your Residential Council District?“, visit this page and type in your address to find out your Seattle City Council District.
Are you nuts?
Absolutely not! There is an active pickleball player on the Mercer Island Parks Board. Why couldn’t there be one on Seattle’s Parks Board?
The City of Shoreline is updating its Parks, Recreation, Open Space and Arts (PROSA) Plan. This plan, which is updated every six years, provides a 20-year vision and framework that will help decide how city money will be spent and what services will be offered.
Take the initial survey
Take their survey. Make sure you say that pickleball courts are very important to you.
When asked if there is anything else you would like to share about Shoreline parks and outdoor spaces, remember to request dedicated outdoor pickleball courts.
Keep in mind that you are helping Shoreline Parks plan its pickleball courts for the year 2030. Explain how Shoreline Parks should plan now to be able to accommodate the demand for pickleball courts it will face in 2030.
Share your vision on a map
Use the survey’s online map to add your ideas, comments, and facility needs related to specific locations. Click the “Like” button for existing comments that you support.
Get ready for more
This is just the start. The plan will be developed over the next 12 to 18 months. It is important that we ask for more pickleball facilities and programs repeatedly during the whole process.
Extra credit
Go talk to Shoreline’s PROS Plan team at upcoming events. Let them know how they should plan for pickleball’s growth over the next 10 years.
Seattle Parks sent you an invitation that reads “We want to hear your ideas on how to make our recreation facilities and programs work for you! Join the conversation with recreation leadership and share your ideas on how we can improve recreation communications, facility hours, and programs.”
Eighteen people, fifteen of which were pickleball players, attended the first listening session.
Here is what transpired.
Good News
Seattle Parks is considering increasing evening and weekend operating hours at its community centers.
Bad News
To increase evening and weekend operating hours, something’s gotta give: the current operating hours. Seattle Parks is considering taking away some of the hours that the community centers are currently open during the day Mondays to Fridays and moving them to evenings and weekends. This could seriously affect the current drop-in pickleball schedule.
What Can You Do About It?
Attend a listening session
If you attend one of the listening sessions, you will be asked four questions:
Indicate when you would like to access recreation facilities and programs, by distributing stickies across days (MTWTFSS) and time slots (7-9,9-12,12-2,2-5,5-9).
What are the main ways that you hear or learn about recreation activities
How would changing hours to evening or weekend impact you?
Is there anything else you would like to share with Seattle Park and Recreation leadership?
Participants in Seattle Parks first listening session at the Delridge Community Center on November 9th, 2022
Make your voice heard
When we hear about expanded hours, we all dream of more pickleball hours. But that is not what we are talking about here. This is mostly a reallocation of hours towards evenings and weekends.
When you answer #3, keep in mind that a carelessly executed expansion plan could lead to the loss of current pickleball drop-in sessions and no new evening or weekend pickleball drop-in sessions.
Answer the online survey
Seattle Parks released an online survey. It will ask questions similar to the ones above.
Make your voice heard
When we hear about expanded hours, we all dream of more pickleball hours. But that is not what we are talking about here. This is mostly a reallocation of hours towards evenings and weekends.
When you answer question #13 (“How would changing the community center operating hours to evenings and weekends impact you?”), keep in mind that a carelessly executed expansion plan could lead to the loss of current pickleball drop-in sessions and no new evening or weekend pickleball drop-in sessions.
Use question #17 (“When you visit a Seattle park, what are some of the things that you would consider an enjoyable experience”) and #18 (“When you think about welcoming safe and clean parks, what does that look like to you) to talk about what you would consider an enjoyable pickleball recreation program and enjoyable pickleball recreation facilities. See yesterday’s post if you need a little inspiration.
How is the indoor pickleball drop-in program working for you? Are the drop-in sessions happening on convenient days and at convenient times? Are there enough players showing up for you to have a game? Can you find sessions attended by players with a skill level that matches yours? Are the kitchen lines painted at the right distance from the net? Are there enough drop-in sessions?
Seattle Parks drop-in pickleball offerings peaked in 2018 and are currently about 25% below that peak. (Data based on weekly indoor drop-in offerings as of November 2nd of each year.)
How are the pickleball classes offered by Seattle Parks? Are they offered at convenient times? At convenient locations? Spanning the right skill levels? If you wanted to enroll, were you able to do so?
How easy is it for you to find out which facilities offer indoor pickleball and what their schedule is? How easy is it for you to know when schedule changes occur?
How is the outdoor pickleball program working for you? Seattle Parks reserves outdoor courts exclusively for pickleball at Delridge, Walt Hundley and Miller some weekday mornings. Did you know about those? Would you like to see more dedicated outdoor pickleball drop-in sessions sponsored by the Parks Department at other locations or at other times?
Does your neighborhood have enough semi-permanent pickleball nets for your outdoor pickleball courts?
Are the pickleball lines easy to see on your local outdoor courts?
Pickleball court lines at Brighton Playfield
Seattle Parks wants to hear your ideas on how to make their recreation facilities and programs work for you! Join the conversation with recreation leadership and share your ideas on how they can improve recreation communications, facility hours, and programs.
Seattle Parks is organizing4 listening sessions where you can share your feedback. These sessions are not just for pickleball, but let’s make sure there is a huge pickleball turnout at all four sessions.Please pick one session to attend and bring your friends. Wear your favorite pickleball shirt.
Wednesday, Nov. 9 – Delridge Community Center, 6 to 7:30 pm
Thursday, Nov. 10 – Meadowbrook Community Center, 6 to 7:30 pm
Tuesday, Nov. 15 – Jefferson Community Center, 6 to 7:30 pm
Thursday, Nov. 17 – Bitter Lake Community Center, 6 to 7:30 pm
Families welcome. Refreshments provided.
UPDATE: A fifth session has been added:
Tuesday, Nov. 15 – Jefferson Community Center, 6 to 7:30 pm
Morning listening sessions will be announced soon.
The City of Auburn is going to update their Parks, Recreation, and Open Space (PROS) Plan. The PROS Plan includes a six-year plan and 20-year vision for Auburn’s park system. It outlines goals and objectives, implementation strategies, capital improvements, and investment programs for the City’s parks, recreation and open space system.
If you think that Auburn will need more pickleball facilities over the next 6 to 20 years, this is your chance to say so, loudly and clearly.
Question 4 will ask “What are the type of facilities that you most regularly use”. Do NOT select “tennis courts”. Instead select “Other” and type in “pickleball courts”. This will help the “pickleball” answers stand out from the “tennis” answers.
Use question 8 to describe in detail the type of pickleball facilities you would like to see in Auburn over the next 6 to 20 years. If you know of existing facilities that could serve as a model, please include links to them.
Please explain why such facilities will be needed. Coud it be that the number of pickleball players is growing exponentially, and that Parks Departments need to start planning accordingly?
What else?
Talk to all the pickleball players you know. Ask them to take action.
Share this web page with all your pickleball friends.
What next?
This is just the beginning of a long process. At the end of the survey, type in your name and email address so Auburn can keep you in the loop for the next step.
How important is it?
This updated PROS plan will define the Auburn Parks Department’s new goals for the medium and long term.
If the Parks Department’s new goals include your pickleball vision, we will be able to work together to realize these common goals over the next 20 years.
If the Parks Department’s new goals don’t include your pickleball vision, any significant pickleball request you make will be seen as a distraction from the Parks’ real goals. You will have to wait 6 or more years for the next PROS plan revision, to give it another shot.
Please sign the petition demanding 6 pickleball courts with high-visibility lines to be painted at the Alki Playground and Whale Tail Park. After each petition is signed, the message below will be automatically emailed to the Deputy Mayor, 3 Councilmembers, with copies sent to Seattle Parks and Recreation.
6 Pickleball Courts and High Visibility Color Lines for Alki
Deputy Mayor Wong, Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Lewis, and Councilmember Morales,
As a member of the Seattle pickleball community, I appreciate the Council Budget Action (CBA SPR-003-C-001) which allocated $50,000 for adding pickleball lines to existing tennis courts in low-income areas. Alki Playground and Whale Tail Park was selected as one of the locations to have pickleball lines added to the tennis courts on 9/19-21 (Mon-Wed).
Please encourage Seattle Parks and Recreation to paint 6 pickleball courts with high-visibility color lines at Alki Playground and Whale Park.
Pickleball Courts Demand
In May 2022, the pickleball community completed a 2-week court usage study and submitted the results to Seattle Parks and Recreation. We observed court usage at 10 Seattle parks (8 with tennis courts and 2 multi-use pickleball/tennis courts) 3 times per day over a 14-day period. Utilization was calculated based on actual usage of total available courts at each location.
Five of the 10 parks were in West Seattle. Below is their utilization during the May 7-20 study:
Tennis Usage at Tennis-only courts: Solstice (27%), Hiawatha (17%), and Alki (16%)
Combined Tennis and Pickleball Usage at Tennis/Pickleball multi-use courts: Delridge (61%) and Walt Hundley (52%)
423 Pickleball players used the 8 pickleball-lined courts while only 19 Tennis players used the 4 tennis courts at Delridge and Walt Hundley.
The court usage study clearly demonstrates the growing demand for pickleball courts in the Seattle metro area. This is the perfect opportunity to maximize pickleball access by adding 6 pickleball courts (instead of the scheduled 4) at the Alki location. The Alki space is similar to the Delridge courts. It is a low-cost and high-impact solution to increase utilization of mostly empty tennis courts and better serve the growing pickleball community.
Line Colors
Existing Seattle pickleball courts have blue or green lines on blue or green tennis courts. According to the American Institute of Architects:
“Aging eyes lose the ability to discriminate pale colors […]. They are also unable to differentiate shades of blue, green, and purple as these cooler colors can read gray. People with color deficiencies are best able to perceive bright colors at the warm end of the spectrum, such as reds and oranges.”
We therefore ask Seattle Parks and Recreation to choose yellow or orange for pickleball line color at ALL pickleball courts. Brighter lines will allow elderly and visually impaired players to reasonably distinguish from the court surface, and easily seen by pickleball players under all lighting conditions.
Redmond Parks spent the summer listening to community ideas for future parks projects in Redmond. This feedback was meant to guide how they manage and enhance your parks, playgrounds, community centers, forests, and trails over the next ten years.
Join Redmond Parks online or in person at City Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 5 to hear how they will update the Parks, Arts, Recreation, Culture, and Conservation (PARCC) Plan to see if this new plan will meet the needs of our growing and diverse pickleball community with new pickleball facilities, activities, programs and events.
What?
Redmond Community Meeting on Parks and Recreation
When?
Wednesday, October 5, 2022, from 6:30 PM until 8:00 PM
Where?
In-person: Redmond City Hall, Council Chambers, 15670 NE 85th Street, Redmond, WA 98073, or
The Miller players’ effort to get more pickleball courts is now at City Hall, where they have found a couple of officials who may be willing to intervene with Seattle Parks and Recreation on their behalf.
What Can I do?
Add your voice to theirs by emailing those officials with your support.
This sample email is all set up for you with officials’ addresses and supporting text. Please personalize the text as much as you like, sign your name and send it off.
Bellevue is updating its Master Plan for Bellevue Airfield Park.
A few weeks ago, we attended the first of three community meetings to tell them what park elements we would like to see at this new community park. Somehow, we all agreed that having pickleball courts would be a great idea.
This in-person community meeting will take place on Thursday, September 22 from 6:30-8 p.m.
Where?
At the South Bellevue Community Center located at 14509 SE Newport Way. Registration is not required.
Who?
You.
You do not need to be a Bellevue resident to participate.
Do I Have to?
For us to have a chance to get 8 or more pickleball courts at Bellevue Airfield Park, it is crucial that the pickleball community be present at this meeting and make their voice heard.
What?
This second community outreach meeting will include opportunities to:
Recap the first community meeting discussion.
See the draft Bellevue Airfield Park Master Plan Update options being considered.
Share your ideas and input for how Parks can balance the needs and program options for the Bellevue Airfield Park.
Discuss your thoughts on the draft plans and future steps for the master plan update process.
Please attend and share your vision for a pickleball facility to be located at Bellevue Airfield Park.
What’s next?
If we do well at this meeting, we will get to attend a third (and possibly final) one.
Question 5 will ask if there is anything missing from the 2012 Master Plan. Make sure to mention that it is missing a pickleball facility. Share a vivid picture of what you mean by that. Is it one pickleball court? Is it two? Is it a dozen? Are there lights? Is there a roof? If you know of an existing facility that could serve as an example, add a link to it.
Question 8 will ask what types of active programs would interest you. Make sure to check the “Other” box and specify “pickleball“. Feel free to expand on what type of pickleball programs you would like to see such as pickleball drop-in, classes, leagues, ladders, tournaments, etc.
