Fears over the steady encroachment of pickleball courts into public spaces across NYC triggered confusion over a potential new court on the Upper East Side and fervent calls to hold the line against the trendy new sport.
In the latest pickleball dustup, an avid tennis community and parents protective of their kids’ play space say they’re worried about the possibility of another park getting pickleball courts — even though the Parks Department says that plan isn’t in the works.
There is, in fact, a renovation planned for John Jay Park, which for years has been a community gathering place for children and their parents to relax and play between 76th and 78th streets along the FDR Drive. The planned $1 million renovation will re-do the concrete floor, repaint the basketball and tennis courts and build an accessible ramp for the park.
There is no pickleball court in the works, say city parks officials.
But that hasn’t stopped the fear from taking root.
Some Upper East Siders are worried that, as the sport gains even more popularity in the warmer months, that the game may eat their favorite parks and that the newly-painted pickleball courts at nearby Carl Schurz Park will serve as a blueprint for John Jay Park.
Pickleball is currently at the center of the city’s age-old problem of making space for its 8 million residents and their hobbies.
“My fear is that once the renovation starts, they may do something,” Luca C.M. Melchionna, a lawyer who lives nearby, said. “… They may, during the process of renovations, change little things. Painting a pickleball court would be very easy, especially because you just need probably $10,000, $15,000, not more than that. It’s a small amount of money compared to the budget that they have at their disposal.”
John Jay Park has a playground, swimming pool, handball wall and open space for kids to play. After two recent new pickleball spaces have opened in the area — one in Carl Schurz Park just a few blocks north, and one pickleball center in Central Park’s Wollman Rink — non-pickleballers in the area are apprehensive that any park change may mean more pickleball.
Ari Rosenburg lives nearby and visits John Jay Park pretty much every day with his seven-year-old son and two-and-a-half year-old twin daughters .
“We go there to create memories with our kids,” Rosenberg said. He goes there and hits balls against the handball with his son and plays games in the enclosed park.
“It’s like a safe space to bring a kid, where he can’t run out into the street. That’s just part of the whole John Jay Park ecosystem, those walls,” Rosenberg said. “The sense that there’d be pickleball courts there just changes the whole dynamic of the park.”
Earlier this year, area residents clashed over Carl Schurz Park, where three formal pickleball courts have been set up by the city after some pro-pickleball advocacy that was kicked off when a guerrilla pickleball player known as the “doctor” marking off courts in a multi-use area.
Pickleball is sort of a mix between tennis and badminton. It has skyrocketed in popularity in the past couple years. Fueled by a post-pandemic “I just want to get outside and be social” attitude, the sport, or game, depending on who you ask, has taken baby boomers and millennials by storm.
“Everyone deserves a space in New York City parks to have fun and relax and unwind. It’s nearly an impossible task to find that amount of space in our precious little tiny New York City parks,” Will Brightbill, the district manager for the area’s community board said.
“It’s always our goal to provide a balance of access between all of the various sports and activities that our regular park visitors enjoy,” Izzy Verdery, a spokesperson for the Parks Department, said in a statement.
Mary Chan, 65, is a nurse and parent of one. She doesn’t inherently have a problem with pickleball, but the way it’s exploded and overtaken the city’s parks, in a flash taking space from the basketball players, tennis players, kids playing tag or jumping rope, is of concern. It seems like pickleball has gotten some kind of special treatment as compared to other sports.
“Just because it’s a craze doesn’t mean you have to take over,” she said. “What are the other people going to do? What are the kids going to do?”
“They shouldn’t take over every park, every public park, because in in our neighborhood, we have a lot of little kids and they need that space of different ages to run around,” Chan said.
Watson Tanlamai, an analyst, said he’d be concerned if the park’s handball wall were to be knocked down and pickleball courts put in their place.
“It’s happening across the city,” Tanlamai, 39, said. “There’s a ton of pickleball courts popping up all over the place… And while this hopefully isn’t an issue at John Jay, I’m sure it’s happening in other parts of the city.”
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