WALNUT PARK COURTS UPDATE

Mark your calendar: There will be an official City ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday October 22 at 5:00 PM at the Walnut courts.

Come out and show the City officials the commitment and spirit of our pickleball community!

The 8 (yes, count them, 8!) courts are OPEN for play now.

Lights are available until 10 PM.

The Walnut courts are located in South Davis, a short ride from Redwood Park.

One of the reasons the City supported expansion of the Walnut facility was the pickleball community’s ability to support play for everyone at every level and to efficiently use the courts. Even with the crush of people at peak hours at Redwood this summer the rotation process worked so everyone got to play. Thanks to everyone who taught visitors and newcomers how to rotate using the paddle racks.

Two paddle racks have been installed at Walnut

- one for 4 courts on the south end

- one for 4 courts on the north end.

Many thanks to Rob for his skillful construction of the new paddle racks.

Players can decide which rack they want to “paddle up” in, with the courtesy limitation that each player has one paddle in use at any given time
There are instructions on how to use the racks (the same as at Redwood)
When a game ends all players:
- Shift towards the open court away from the entrance (towards the apartment of building)
- This leaves the entering players to start playing on the court closest to the gate
Backpack racks have been installed just inside the gates keep your backpacks secure. Please be courteous player in the closest court by hanging your pack quickly and between play.

The courts are closer together than recommended to the City.

Therefore it is essential that players wait for their next game OUTSIDE the fence on the pathway and/or at the picnic tables. The City has cleared an area in front of the bushes for “camp” chairs.

Come out an join us to celebrate these beautiful new courts at the official opening on Tuesday.

October 18,2024

Good news, bad news on Walnut courts. 9/17/24

The courts are almost done. The surfaces are painted and lines are drawn with the appropriate gritted paint. The nets are up. The courts are beautiful. Custom soft court barriers that will divide the space into quarters are being awaited for delivery and installation. The City will alert us when the courts are ready for play.

The bad news: despite the input and recommendations that were made (early and often) through our Parks and Recreation department, the Engineering department was unwilling to act on the information being shared. As a result, four of the beautiful new courts do not meet the minimum pickleball sidelines requirements. In addition, the light poles that we knew would be a problem for those four courts are closer than desired and don’t meet the recommended USAPA court specifications. So “switch @ 6” will need to be employed for a fair game on those courts.

The City spent a lot of money on this project and it’s unfortunate that the City engineers couldn’t have had the respect for the “user community” to listen. We were able to provide feedback for barriers, additional gates, and the court surface as well as a few other pickleball centric issues. Our Parks and Recreation Director did suggest that the engineer and the project manager do a walk through with us to understand the user community’s concerns, but that never happened.

We did finally meet with the with the City engineers (after the fact) Monday 10/16, but only because we happened to see the problem and alerted our contacts at the City. It was a distressing meeting where we were flatly told the City had no plans to “fix the something they didn’t consider a problem and that there’s no further money for the project.“ Interestingly , after the meeting Diana Jensen, the Director of Engineering stopped Tom Green. We had alerted her to his instrumental participation in the remodeling of Crawford court. She asked him a question about the lights that could have solved the light pole problem. If she had just taken the time to talk to the us we would have pointed her in the right direction before the problem was created. Lesson learned? Sure hope so.

Obviously we are disappointed, as many of you may well be. After such a long wait, a broken engineering process seems to have marred these beautiful courts with a playability short coming. We have no doubt that the courts will be well used, but please be careful to not hurt yourselves.

We will let you know when the courts are officially open for play.

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