Minneapolis Park Board members have heard pickleballers' cry for more courts and are poised to change three park master plans to accommodate the pickleball passion sweeping the Twin Cities.
From October to January, the board received 976 responses to proposals for new pickleball courts at Loring Park, the Lake Nokomis Community Center and near the intersection of Minnehaha Parkway and Bloomington Avenue.
This was extremely high engagement for an online survey, said Adam Arvidson, parks director of strategic planning. He said about 60% of comments highly supportive of two out of three plans.
"I can tell you from experience, with community engagement like this we hardly ever see a 60% consensus on anything. These are really, really huge numbers," Arvidson said.
Pickleball is an intergenerational net sport played on a badminton-size court with a plastic ball and paddles. In 2020, there were 4.2 million players in the United States, up more than 20% from the year before, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association's latest Topline Participation Report.
Callers phoning into Wednesday night's Park Board meeting said they were eager for new pickleball-dedicated courts but not enthusiastic about alienating tennis players in the process. Plans call for building pickleball courts next to the old tennis courts at Loring Park, but up to six pickleball courts would replace two tennis courts at the Lake Nokomis Community Center. Additional pickleball striping of tennis courts at Minnehaha Parkway could be confusing for players of both sports.
Some commenters said the board was sidelining tennis in a short-sighted bid to meet the demand for pickleball, a relatively recent trend. Others complained about the poor maintenance of tennis courts.
Arvidson acknowledged that dual tennis and pickleball courts are not ideal because they are very different sports, but he said Minneapolis' constrained urban park system requires some courts to accommodate multiple sports.
