“They pulled a fast one on us, for sure,” says Marc Nelson, who leads the Congress Park Pickleball Club. Instead, the tennis courts that would have been turned into pickleball courts during the Congress Park restoration project will remain devoted to tennis. As a result, the department has nixed that project, as well as a proposed court at Sloan’s Lake that was about 100 feet from homes. While Denver isn’t instituting a moratorium, Gilmore says that the 500-feet measurement is a guideline it will consider when building future courts.Įven with noise mitigation measures, 350 feet is likely as close as the city would come to homes when building pickleball courts, he adds.Īt Congress Park, the distance between the new courts the city had planned and the closest neighbors would have been about 300 feet. Now, Denver is considering going the way of Centennial, which just instituted a six-month moratorium on new pickleball court construction within 500 feet of homes.
The city found that pickleball regularly violated the city’s 55-decibel noise ordinance, reaching over 70 decibels at fourteen of the eighteen homes by the courts. The Congress Park Pickleball Club has 1,400 members on Facebook who are dedicated to the game, and their conversation as they wait to play just added to the din, neighbors complain.Īs the complaints got too loud to ignore, Parks & Recreation worked with the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment to study the noise. There's no break.”Īnd the constant thwack of the hard pickleball paddles making contact with the ball has been driving some neighbors nuts.Īt first, residents of the homes near the Congress Park courts enjoyed the game, Gilmore says, but when the sport took off during the pandemic, the crowds at the courts became disruptive. “Pickleball, from the time people start playing on the pickleball court at eight o'clock in the morning - it's supposed to be from eight to eight at Congress, but it's even going later because people are out there playing - it's just nonstop for twelve to fourteen hours a day. “I know playing pickleball is one of those things that provides a nice thing for quality of life, but something you enjoy should not negatively impact others in a manner that is just overwhelming,” says Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director of Parks & Recreation. But after more study, the department concluded that even that won’t fix the problems. In response, Denver Parks & Recreation decided to move the pickleball courts closer to the inside of the park, away from homes, as part of a planned restoration of all of the sports courts. Pickleball, a sixty-year-old sport, became wildly popular during the pandemic, and residents near the Congress Park courts started complaining about the noise and the crowd two years ago. Not just for a week-long lull while snow melts, and not for a several-month gap while the courts are moved elsewhere in the park, which had been the plan. He said the small court has created a community of people who love the sport and bond over it.Starting April 3, there will be no more pickleball at Congress Park. "We have some boisterous pickleball players… we try 'Hey, remember our neighbors.'” Nelson said the large group tries to police itself, once banning someone who consistently parked illegally in the alley next to the court. “This is a new thing that’s kind of sprouted out since the pandemic and these courts were here,” Nelson said. The group’s chairman, Marc Nelson, said people come from all over the metro area to play on the small court. More than 1,400 people belong to the Congress Park Pickleball Club on Facebook. Gilmore said it would be "irresponsible" to bring pickleball back to Congress Park, but he said the department would look to find a park that's right for the sport. "I am saddened to write you today that the noise emanating from pickleball played in this beloved park has become illegally loud, unhealthy - and simply untenable," another neighbor wrote. "It has taken my true joy of living on the park away as now the noise and continuous congestion has become a true nuisance to my family and me,” one neighbor wrote in a complaint.
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