Seattle Outdoor Pickleball Construction Briefing and Update

On August 11, 2022, Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) briefed and updated Seattle\'s Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners on its \"2021-2022 Outdoor Pickleball Study\"

We were hoping to learn more about SPR’s current plan for outdoor pickleball during this briefing, but the presentation remained at a very high-level. If you have attended Seattle Parks’ two open houses on the subject or read our post titled New Seattle Outdoor Pickleball Courts: Draft Plan, you probably know a lot more about the subject than the Commissioners do.

A few interesting points nonetheless:

  • SPR describes pickleball’s growth as a pickleball explosion.
  • SPR gets the social nature of pickleball, as well as its drop-in culture.
  • SPR was surprised to get over 3,000 responses to their online survey.
  • SPR thinks that a few single tennis courts that are not very much used are the best candidates to be converted into dedicated pickleball courts. Unfortunately, most such courts in Seattle are smaller than regular size tennis courts. This means that once converted into pickleball courts, these pickleball courts would have less room than you might expect behind the base lines. Watch the beginning of this video to see why having space behind the baselines is important to be able to retrieve deep shots.
  • Preliminary cost estimates for two brand new dedicated pickleball facilities of 8 to 12 courts are more than originally anticipated when planning for the upcoming Seattle Parks District budget cycle.
  • SPR reports that Seattle schools might start lining some of the tennis courts at their facilities.

You can watch the entire presentation below. We apologize for the blue box covering some of the slides.

The entire meeting, including the presentation above is available here. This video does not have the blue box problem of the video above, but the image is not as sharp.