Permit For Pickleball Courts to Come Before Hearing Officer Wednesday

A city hearing officer will consider an application for a conditional use permit (CUP) application to allow the expansion of a park and recreation facility at Viña Vieja Park on East Orange Grove Boulevard.

The CUP would facilitate the construction of 12 pickleball courts and related amenities on 2.5 acres of undeveloped park area.

“Pickleball is a paddleball sport that combines elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis,” according to a city staff report. “Two or four players use solid paddles to hit a plastic ball back-and-forth over a net. In response to an expressed desire in recent years from the Pasadena community for permanent dedicated pickleball facilities, the city’s Public Works Department, in conjunction with a community Pickleball Advisory Group, has undertaken an effort to find suitable locations.”

Pickleball dates back to 1965, when Washington Congressman Joel Pritchard and two colleagues came home from a game of golf to find bored children. They created a game in which they gave the kids table tennis paddles and a wiffle ball and lowered the net on their badminton court. Both kids and adults fell in love with the game, which evolved to its present incarnation, according to usa pickleball.org.

The project proposes construction of 10 standard-size pickleball courts, two adaptive/wheelchair-accessible courts, an approximately 900 square-foot restroom and storage building, and a warm-up and practice court with walls interconnected by paved walkways.

Each pickleball court would be enclosed with a gated, eight-foot-high, vinyl-coated chain link fence with privacy screen adjacent to walkways, and a gated, four-foot-high, vinyl-coated, chain link fence to separate parallel courts. Additional amenities include benches, picnic tables, shade canopies, drinking fountains, bike racks, signage, lighting, trash receptacles, landscaping, and utility connections.

The courts would be served by an 89-space surface parking lot accessed via the existing parking lot to the north.

The lot would include 85 standard spaces and four Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant spaces. 22 of the 89 new parking spaces would be located at the southern end of the existing parking lot serving Alice’s Dog Park/Viña Vieja Park that is currently occupied by a circular vehicle turn-around and is not striped for parking. The project would be used as an opportunity to provide adequate parking not only for the pickleball courts but additional parking to serve the rest of Viña Vieja Park.

The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. can be viewed at
: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81451790079