WILMINGTON — Town officials are looking at developing tennis and pickleball courts on land at a town-owned park on Lisle Hill Road. 

“My understanding is pickleball courts could be made on tarred surface so it may be cost-effective to put all four of them up there,” Town Manager Scott Tucker said. 

His hope is to bring a project back to the Select Board that includes parking spaces if all components can fit. 

On Tuesday, the Select Board approved spending $150,000 from local option tax revenue to build new tennis courts and/or pickleball courts out of the floodplain. Currently, tennis courts are by the Old School Community Center and Public Safety Facility on Beaver Street. 

Board members previously decided against renovating the existing courts and to explore alternatives. Lisle Hill would be a new location. 

“We’re going to evaluate what Lisle Hill will offer if they can offer us anything,” Board Chairman Tom Fitzgerald said. “We’re going to have to talk with the neighbors, too.” 

Tucker said the project will need to be approved by the Wilmington Development Review Board. 

Pickleball has been described as one of the fastest growing sports. In Wilmington, it’s popular and played inside the community center. 

“It’s much more inclusive and people will play with other people who are at different levels,” Clare Grabher, national pickleball pro and former tennis pro, said in an interview at a clinic at the community center in 2021. “That never really happened with tennis.”

National pickleball pro Yvonne Ting said “the equalizer” is that the game is not about power.

“It’s about finesse, a quick hand,” she said.