The Plot: Not against Pickleball in Denver | Parks planning and making objective decisions about facilities

There's been lots of national coverage about the rise in pickleball participation ("Pickleball is exploding, and it’s getting messy," Washington Post, "America's fastest-growing sport is a cross of tennis, pingpong and badminton," NPR), the development of professional pickleball leagues, etc.  

Amateur pickleball players play mixed double matches during the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) Baird Wealth Management Open at the Lindner Family Tennis Center, September 11, 2022, Mason, Ohio. (Arden S. Barnes/For The Washington Post)

While pickleball is often played on tennis and basketball courts that have been modified, there are dedicated courts and a rise in the demand for the addition of courts to existing parks for outdoor play, and indoors, in recreation centers.

On Reddit, I saw an article about Denver and how the parks department reversed course wrt accommodating and adding courts in a couple particular parks ("Pickleball players call fault on Denver’s plans to remove courts from two city parks," Denver Post).  The article discussed how a pickleball enthusiastic lawyer submitted a 37 page legal appeal of the decision to the parks department decision.

On Reddit and in letters to the editor, people called the parks department action a form of nimbyism.

Here in Salt Lake, I am on the board of a public park, which because it is jointly owned by the City and County has an independent board, like a parks conservancy.  

It's great for me because all the things I learned in DC and said DC should do--my joke is that I might not be a good planner, but I am great at gap analysis, and in planning and civic asset management, DC has holes so big you can drive multiple semi-truck trailers through--I at least have a chance of implementing with regard to parks planning and practice--alas, not transportation and land use.

It happens that we have a proposal pending before us to add a new type of facility to the park.  

I was appalled at how weak the proposal was, and to discover our lack of a good analysis tool to use to work through in grading, improving, and judging proposals in an objective way.  

We need such tools because most of the board members aren't planners, and they need guidance to be able to make better decisions.

Slide from a Denver parks planning initiative

So I started developing such a tool.  

It's gone through a few iterations, and it happens that the kernel that started it comes from Denver's outdoor recreation planning initiative.

More recently I learned that the US Forest Service began developing a related instrument, called the Recreational Opportunities Spectrum, in the late 1970s.

One of my big issues in planning generally is what I call "designing conflict in" versus "designing conflict out."  

A lot of planning is narrow in scope and inadequately takes into account the creation of conflicts through new projects and development.  OTOH, people often think there will be conflict, massive conflict from new projects, and in the end, there isn't.

The issue in Denver is that the pickleball courts in the particular parks are near residences.  Pickleball can be noisy, and people want to play as late as possible--not just requiring lighting, but creating other potential nuisances.

Conflict between uses is an element of my framework, and frankly a different Reddit thread on parks, and the issue in Denver has made me add noise and proximity to residences as potential conflicts to address.

Having a formal and robust framework for analyzing parks and recreation facilities and a process for determining why/why not wrt location decisions is a way forward in dealing with these kinds of issues, and for being able to demonstrate objectively why decisions are made with particular recommendations.

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Another element in the framework is presence of a comparable facility in nearby parks.  And questions on whether or not to duplicate them in our park makes sense.

Again, that's a way to make yes/no decisions in an objective way.  E.g., we don't have a dog park, although the whole park, practically, is a dog park, while nearby at Fairmont Park there is a 2.5 acre high quality fenced in dog park.  It's 3 blocks away, so we don't need to duplicate it.