Expert Recommends Building New Pickleball Center

While it pales in comparison with the short-term rental controversy, the fervor surrounding pickleball and tennis at the island’s Racquet Center sometimes seems to raise the heart rates of its participants as much as the on-court action does.

The Tuesday, August 16 meeting of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee (PRAC) in council chambers was tame compared to the June 9 meeting, when consultant Ken Ballard was on hand to visit the facility, interview staff, and scout alternate sites. During that meeting pickleball and tennis enthusiasts were seated across the aisle from each other, debating back and forth about the future of the popular facility. 

Ballard*King, a Colorado-based recreation consulting firm, was hired to assess the Racquet Center and identify factors, issues, and concerns with the current use of the facility. During the August 16 meeting, Ken Ballard, president of Ballard*King presented his final report, detailing four options to the PRAC board. He concluded with recommendations on how the city can best provide for the island’s pickleball and tennis players. Racquetball has always been a part of the Racquet Center, but its future looks bleak when reviewing Ballard*King’s 41-page report.

"We believe both tennis and pickleball are viable sports,” Ken Ballard said through a live video feed during the meeting, "and need to be accommodated at public courts. Racquetball, with its limited market appeal, should be eliminated. Our opinion is the building should ultimately be torn down.”

A father and son, avid racquetball players at the Racquet Center, attended both meetings. While they were visibly disappointed to hear Ballard’s recommendation, the writing was on the wall for the aging racquetball building.

"There’s only 10 memberships for racquetball right now,” Ballard said, "Racquetball shows a very small rate of usage."

At the heart of the matter is the challenge of giving tennis players and pickleball players what each group wants. Pickleball is bursting at the seams to the point where memberships have been frozen and the waiting list for memberships is growing as fast as the popularity of the sport itself. Meanwhile tennis players, many of whom have been Racquet Center supporters for decades, have watched their tennis courts be sacrificed to try to accommodate the pickleball zealots.

“There’s 376 pickleball members,” said Doug Kelly, PRAC board member, "with 156 people on the waiting list for pickleball, 93 tennis members, and racquetball has six members.”

Of course those numbers don’t account for the number of potential pickleball members who may have decided adding their names to a waiting list of 156 to be fruitless. 

Ballard presented an exhaustive demographics study about racket sports participation, making a deep and critical assessment of the current condition of the Racquet Center, a facility that has been around since the 1970s. Its basic layout, with a two-story office/check-in building, and another large building for racquetball, hasn’t changed over the decades.

Ballard presented four options for the PRAC board to consider. All four recommend razing the racquetball building. All but one recommend adding more pickleball courts. Ballard was also pointed in his criticism of the current situation at the Racquet Center. 

"Regardless of the options moving forward,” Ballard said, "there needs to be improvements to the maintenance of the facility for sure. We talk about image and appeal. The bottom line is the Racquet Center is an older facility. It’s in need of a significant upgrade. It’s not great to look at. It doesn’t have a real sense of arrival, it doesn’t have the presence in terms of welcoming players there. It’s a little tired. It needs some help. Maintenance of the facility is adequate at best. There needs to be a strong, comprehensive maintenance plan in place. As it relates to maintenance, the level, even of the existing facilities with no changes to it, needs to be raised above where it is right now."

Of the four options, Ballard recommends Option Two, returning the Racquet Center to a tennis center and building a pickleball center at another site. Ballard’s entire report can be accessed on the city’s website, cityofmarcoisland.com.

“Make improvements to the existing center,” Ballard said, "making it a tennis center. Pickleball moves to new courts and has a new center, with new parking. So both sports are accommodated.”

Ballard realizes that Option Two carries the largest price tag.

“This is the most expensive of the four options,” Ballard said, "and it may not be possible from the city’s perspective, financially. We understand that. If the city feels it is unable to commit to that level of funding, then Option One, which is basically the status quo, would be our next recommended option, as a fallback. We recognize that Option One doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, but it does allow both sports to continue and has the least capital obligation and operational impact to the city.”

PRAC committee member Delores Siegel thinks building a new pickleball center at another location is nothing more than a pipe dream.

"Option Two is probably not realistic,” Siegel said. "We all won’t live long enough for Marco Island to buy a piece of property and build pickleball courts for our pickleball players to play.”

Ballard and Dan Smith, the city’s director of community affairs, investigated possible sites for a pickleball complex.

"Any kind of discussion about building a new complex is somewhat an issue because the city doesn’t really have a good location,” Ballard said. "Dan and I spent time driving around, looking at potential sites. There’s nothing that’s really ideal for that. The likelihood is that the city would have to buy property to build any kind of facility. That’s going to be expensive. We identified an area across from City Hall that could be potentially utilized. But again, the city doesn’t own that.” 

Option One, Ballard’s fallback plan, calls for keeping the six tennis courts and nine pickleball courts. Committee member Kelly doesn’t endorse Option One.

"I’m thinking Option One doesn’t address what the numbers are asking for,” Kelly said. "Last fall the PRAC committee recommended that tennis courts seven and eight be converted to pickleball."  

Ballard understands Kelly’s concern and agrees.

“Three of the four options involve adding more pickleball courts,” Ballard said. "We recognize there is a demand for more pickleball courts. That’s why the bulk of the options reflect that. 

On Marco Island right now, the demand side of it is on the pickleball side, not the tennis side. I don’t think the tennis courts are in the greatest condition, and I think that’s part of it. That’s not helping things.”

“We recognize that the tennis membership has remained static,” Ballard continues, "much smaller, in terms of numbers compared to pickleball. It’s ultimately, how much of a commitment do you want to make to tennis going forward? I do think it's a viable sport long term. Probably needs to be at least accommodated in one way, shape or form, by the city."

Committee member Dawn Kuhn, who was connecting to the meeting remotely, says the writing is on the wall.

“I have a hard time providing that much real estate to tennis,” Kuhn said, "when there’s only 95 members and there’s over 500 people wanting to play pickleball. There are five times more people wanting to play pickleball. So I like Option Three for that. Tennis courts seven and eight are nearly obsolete right now as far as tennis goes. Wouldn’t it be better to keep the four tennis courts together as they are now? If we build more courts, we can accommodate all of those people who are on the waiting list for pickleball."

Option Three calls for converting two tennis courts into an additional eight pickleball courts. This plan reduces the number of tennis courts to four.

“Four is the absolute minimum number to continue the tennis program,” Ballard said.

Peter Prodanov, a pickleball instructor at the Racquet Center, would like to see five tennis courts at the facility.

"I think keeping five tennis courts is a better option,” Prodanov said. "That makes it possible to have USTA matches because that requires five courts. I think the best option would be to get rid of the racquetball court, keep the stadium court, take court seven and build four pickleball courts. I think you do nothing with court eight for a year. Just leave it as is. See if there’s a need for it. Don’t spend money fixing it. See if they need it for tennis or if they need it for pickleball.”

Prodanov believes that the city perhaps shouldn’t just stop at razing the racquetball building.

"Maybe tear down the office building and build one somewhere else that’s more centrally located,” Prodanov suggests, “just smaller and on one level. Because really all you need are bathrooms, some storage space and a little office.”

PRAC vice-chair Allyson Richards wants to see the city take action.

“The bottom line is that we have to do something,” Richards said. "Make a decision to at least upgrade the courts."  

Ballard agrees that something needs to be done.

“Doing nothing is really not an option in our minds,” Ballard said. "You have an asset that’s really starting to show its age - and that’s being kind. So yes, you need to put money into this facility to make it more usable, even if you don’t do anything to the number of courts.”

Committee member Siegel feels strongly that the city needs to step up for the pickleball players on the island.

“We really need to do something for our pickleball players,” Siegel said. "It isn’t fair for you to pay taxes here on Marco Island and for us to say, ‘Go somewhere else to play pickleball. You can’t play at home.' We need to do something for our citizens. Maybe this is a way to have more residents play. How about if we have five tennis courts and 13 pickleball courts and we give everybody a little something. It may cost a little more than Option One, but we could do this quicker than anything else, and make everybody happy.”

Carlos Portu, committee chairman, tried to put a bow on things in his calm, collected manor.

"We haven’t had a lot of time with this report,” Portu said. "I think it’s important to kind of leave it out there in the community, give people a chance to review it. Give it some thought. The Racquet Center is a significant facility and it’s a lot of resource for our community. To me, we should try to impact as many lives as we can in the community with the resources that we have - regardless of what that use is. To me, it doesn’t have anything to do with pickleball versus tennis, it has everything to do with letting as many residents as possible use the resources of the city. I think it’s already compelling that we have a facility of that proportion. Two acres on Marco Island is not exactly cheap real estate. And we reserve that for what amounts to less than five percent of our full-time population. Which is probably a lower number than darn near almost every other facility that we have from a city standpoint, and from a park standpoint. The demand and the demographics are in one direction. It’s hard to argue with those numbers.”

The PRAC board meets on the third Tuesday of every month.