In Boulder, space for anything — whether it’s housing developments or recreational activities — comes at a premium.
Members of the city’s tennis and pickleball communities are acutely aware of Boulder’s scarcity of space. Tennis players say there is a shortage of courts in the city, and more courts are slated to disappear with an up-and-coming redevelopment and flood mitigation project planned for the coming years.
Pickleballers, on the other hand, have no dedicated courts in town and are relegated to playing on converted tennis courts — a situation that’s less than satisfactory for players of either sport — and have lost their ability to play even on some multisport courts, thanks to noise complaints from nearby neighbors.
It’s hard to deny the enormous potential impact of projects like the Millennium Harvest House Hotel redevelopment project, which will create more than 300 apartments for students, or the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation plan, which is expected to reduce the flood risk for 2,300 community members living in 260 structures downstream in the West Valley.
But the two projects together will close 27 tennis courts — 15 currently located at the Millennium Hotel site and 12 located at CU South, the annexed plot of land at Table Mesa Drive and U.S. 36 where the flood mitigation project will take place — and it’s not clear where else in the city that many courts could go.
And at a time when both tennis and pickleball are booming in popularity, players of both sports say even the current number of courts in Boulder is inadequate, but taking away existing courts will only make the situation worse.
Similar dynamics have unfolded in cities across the U.S., and in many cities, the struggle for court space has pitted the tennis and pickleball communities against one another. In Boulder, though, the tennis and pickleball communities have chosen collaboration over conflict and are working together in hopes that each community can get what it most wants.
What do the city’s tennis and pickleball players want? Dedicated courts for each sport. More indoor spaces for tennis and outdoor spaces for pickleball. And acknowledgment from the city that it will prioritize taking steps to improve the situation for all involved.
Deteriorating court system
Pickleball has been called “America’s fastest-growing sport,” and for good reason: CNN reports that there were an estimated 8.9 pickleball players in 2022, a 159% increase from three years prior.
But Grace Thomson, a cofounder of the BOCO Pickleball Club, said that for as popular as pickleball has become in Boulder, the city has no dedicated pickleball courts. There are courts that have been temporarily converted to pickleball courts, but are still also used for tennis, such as the courts at the South Boulder Recreation Center. Thomson said, however, that having both tennis and pickleball lines painted on courts makes them hard to use.
Additionally, she said, dedicated pickleball courts have different colors painted inside and outside the lines, which helps players determine their shot selection, but multi-use courts must stay monotone (except for differing colors of lines).
“I feel like the city’s philosophy has been, at least in the past, that providing multi-use courts for tennis and pickleball solves the problem (of not having enough courts),” Thomson said. “It actually causes more problems.”
And the pickleball community has lost several courts recently due to noise complaints. After neighbors complained about the noise from pickleball games at the North Boulder Recreation Center, pickleballers were blocked from using two of the tennis courts, which equates to four pickleball courts.
“Demand is already increasing all the time,” said Thomson. “Losing four courts is huge.” She added that that equates to 24 hours a day of lost court time.
Tennis has been growing in popularity, too, even if not at the same dramatic rate as pickleball. According to the U.S. Tennis Association, one million new players joined the sport in 2022, bringing the total number of players to 23.6 million as of last year. That’s a 33% increase in participation from 2020.
Duke Paluch is the co-founder and executive director of the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center in Boulder, which used to be a private club but is now open for community use. He said both tennis and pickleball, which are social in nature, have become far more popular over the past few years in part because of the pandemic and what he called the “loneliness epidemic” of the past few years.
Now, his courts stay fully booked from when they open at 6 a.m. until the University of Colorado Boulder club finishes playing at 11 p.m., and private tennis clubs in Boulder have waitlists several years long. There simply isn’t adequate court space to accommodate the city’s 500 or so players, particularly in the winter, he said.
According to Paluch, the tennis boom of the 1970s and 1980s brought a large number of tennis courts to Boulder and cities across the country. Those courts were typically made of asphalt, though, which only has a lifespan of 40 to 50 years. The result, he said, is that many of those older courts are deteriorating and need to be replaced. At best, it creates undesirable conditions for play, and at worst, it can be a safety hazard.
“The substructure needs to be replaced, and you can’t just put paint over it,” he said. “And that’s what the city has had to do with a lot of the courts. It’s called patching. You patch it, you make it look and make it play as best as possible. But they’re just band-aids.”
The RMTC leases the 15 courts near the Millennium Harvest House Hotel. During the winter, the courts are covered under a bubble dome, so that players can continue to play indoors. But Paluch said this year would be the last “bubble season” before the hotel is demolished and the courts (which are part of the hotel property) are removed.
“I’m happy to see the redevelopment. The hotel’s property needs to be redeveloped, (and) the tennis courts at our club need to be redeveloped,” he said. “It’s just (that) we’re losing them, there.”
Another 12 courts at CU South will need to be removed in the not-too-distant future since they are located in the floodplain. Paluch said there’s no clear plan to replace those courts somewhere else.
Players express ‘cautious optimism’
Boulder is now in the process of conducting a study and creating a new plan for the city’s system of tennis and pickleball courts.
Deputy project manager Charlotte O’Donnell, who is a planner with Boulder Parks and Recreation, said the study stems in part from the city’s recognition that pickleball and tennis are “growing sports” and that the city needs to plan for both current and future demand.
According to a city website, the goals of the study are threefold: to look at short-term actions Parks and Rec can take in managing and investing in its current courts, study longer-term investment opportunities and explore whether the department could have a hand in creating an indoor or outdoor facility. Currently, the department manages 28 courts for tennis and pickleball combined.
In other communities, court shortages have strained relationships between the local tennis and pickleball communities. Michael Xu, president of the Boulder Tennis Association, said times are “difficult for both sports” right now in Boulder.
“In the short term, there’s going to be pain until we figure this out,” Xu said.
But Clifford Moss, president of the BOCO Pickleball Club, said the tennis and pickleball communities here have a “unique relationship” with one another and have avoided the type of conflict that’s become common in so many other cities.
“Usually the headlines are about the conflict between tennis and pickleball. … It becomes a zero-sum game. One comes at the expense of the other,” Moss said. “Michael (Xu) and I talked about it, and that doesn’t make sense. Our solution is not to take over each other’s courts. … We just need more courts.”
Moss and Xu said they’re cautiously optimistic about whether the court plan will produce their desired outcomes. But regardless of what might result from the court system plan, leaders from Boulder’s tennis and pickleball communities are keeping their sights set on the broader goals they want to accomplish and the things that make them passionate about their sports.
Moss said his ultimate goal is to promote “pickleball for the masses” and to make it easier for people to access, because to him, it’s more than a sport: it offers community and connection.
“I don’t think people should forget the social aspects that pickleball has. We have dinner parties with each other. We have romances — I won’t get into those. I mean, it’s a community. People are pretty close on a social level,” he said.
And Paluch of the RMTC said he hopes the tennis community won’t lose the opportunity to play. As a former high school tennis coach, he especially hopes there will not only be courts for use, but also continued programming so that young people to enjoy the sport.
“It’s just so important to be part of a team and to be part of an activity, and as we lose courts, kids have fewer opportunities to participate in developing the game of a lifetime,” he said.
“And that’s one of the sadder parts of it.”