Quick Take
In Santa Cruz, the growing demand for pickleball courts has collided with the city’s lone BMX park, at Depot Park. At a community meeting Wednesday, pickleball players and BMX riders discussed the future of the space, sparking a broader conversation about balancing recreation needs for all generations.
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
Inside the London Nelson Community Center on Wednesday night, the exploding popularity and demand for pickleball met the long-established culture of extreme sports in Santa Cruz, as parks staff floated an idea to replace the city’s only BMX ramps with what would be its first and only dedicated pickleball courts.
Although the meeting was less an atomic collision than a meeting of minds, members of both the pickleball and BMX communities said they felt dismayed that the proposal essentially pitted one group’s interests against the other. The city’s proposal would have replaced the big ramps at Depot Park, which staff said have been underused, with four pickleball courts.
As the groups talked, it became clear that the pickleball community, well outnumbered and older than most of the cyclists who showed up, did not want the courts if it meant robbing amenity space from bikers. However, those feelings didn’t diminish the fervor for a dedicated pickleball location somewhere in the city.
“I don’t know if this is the place for it,” one older blond woman stood up to say. “But Santa Cruz has an aging population, we need pickleball courts. We have hundreds of people who want to play pickleball, it helps us stay active. But this doesn’t look like the right spot.”
Many of the bikers who came out said the “Fun Spot” fell out of favor with the larger BMX community after the city got rid of the smaller, wooden features at the park and left only a couple of larger ramps, which don’t lend themselves to a range of skill levels. The group unanimously urged the city to find ways to expand the park with more variety instead of replacing it with pickleball courts.
“This park is all we have for big jumps,” Andrew Clifton, 31, said. Clifton, who grew up in the area, said young cyclists today have to leave the city in order to develop the skills needed to hit those bigger jumps. “It’s not fair that the kids today don’t have the resources to build their skills.”
Mark Dettle, president of the roughly 450-member Santa Cruz Pickleball Club, said there is a real hunger for a dedicated pickleball location. Right now, the pickleballers in town share courts with tennis players, such as at Sergeant Derby Park on the Westside. The city’s vision for four courts at Depot Park would be a “a nice, local spot,” Dettle said, but it would be too small; eight to 10 courts would better meet the need, he said.
After the meeting, Tony Elliot, the city’s parks and recreation director, said the feedback was clear, and the Fun Spot would likely stay a BMX park.
“We’re trending in the direction of not putting a pickleball court here,” Elliot said.
Although he said his department has had open lines of communication with everyone from skateboarders to lawn bowlers and pickleball players, staffers have not fostered a relationship with the BMX community. Wednesday’s meeting, he said, revived that line.
However, the need for pickleball courts still exists, and parks staff said they would continue working to find the right location.
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