Proposed park project pleases peck of pickleball players
Courtesy of Tom Hincy
A group of pickleball players compete at Washington Park, where the city is planning to put in new courts.
Photo courtesy of Tom Hincy
Pickleball players compete at Washington Park.
Courtesy of Tom Hincy
Washington is seeking Local Share Account money to resurface an area in Washington Park for pickleball courts.
The competition is on for pickleball at Washington Park, starting with a Local Share Account application for funding.
The city of Washington plans to ask for $55,361 in LSA funds with a $20,000 local match to resurface an area of the park next to the tennis courts to turn it into permanent pickleball courts. Mayor Scott Putnam said Wednesday that the $20,000 match would come from the city’s park development fund.
Putnam said the conversations started about a year-and-a-half ago, when South Strabane Township resident Tom Hincy showed up to a council meeting to ask for a pickleball space.
“Tom will be the first to tell you it’s the fastest growing sport in the world,” Putnam said. “So we’re doing our part to try to help them out.”
Hincy organizes the group who plays there every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. His group put some lines down on the paved area next to the tennis courts, and they’ve been playing there with portable nets. The space hadn’t been used much by anyone, except for an occasional roller skater.
“We’ve got the unused courts there that we did not get surfaced when we did the rest of the area,” Putnam said. “We weren’t sure what we wanted or what the community needed. Now we know what the community needs, and we’d like to finish the project.”
He said they have on average 10 to 13 people each time they play, but about 34 people in their group that show up regularly. Most of them are from Washington and South Strabane Township, he said. Hincy’s group used to play in South Strabane’s Community Park, but the courts were set up a few feet from a grassy slope, which proved to be a safety concern.
He showed a picture of his group playing pickleball to City Council. The average age of the people in the photo was 70, Hincy said.
“I told them a lot of their senior citizens are playing,” Hincy said.
That was also a point that he and the city made in the LSA application.
“One of the big things we put in the LSA application is the health benefits, especially for seniors,” Hincy said. “It helps depression, and it helps the aging stay healthy longer.”
The plan is to level out the pickleball space and resurface it, similar to what the city did with the tennis courts in 2016. Then they’ll put in permanent posts and nets for all four courts and fence in each of them with four-foot fencing. Hincy said they also plan to add lighting, a water fountain and a storage box.
“We want to start this in the spring,” he said. “Once the permanent nets are up, we’ll get people from all over, because this is a central area.”