Can Santa Cruz handle the pickleball boom?

Facing the threat of having their park wiped out by pickleball, a small but vocal group of Santa Cruz-based BMX riders showed up at a community meeting this week to make their voices heard.

The city’s parks and recreation department is currently looking for spaces in Santa Cruz’s extensive parks system to help expand the footprint for the activity that has become known as America’s fastest growing sport.

“In 2017, fewer than half of the largest U.S. cities offered formalized pickleball courts,” CNBC reported in May. “Today, parks and recreation departments have embraced the sport, spurring the installment of more than 3,000 courts across 100 of the most populated cities in the country.”

And while Santa Cruz parks and recreation officials admit they’ve been “behind the times a little bit” on ramping up for pickleball, they said the need for more courts in the city has become apparent in recent years. 

“A lot of communities built out pickleball courts eight to 10 years ago,” Tony Elliot, Santa Cruz’s director of Parks & Recreation, told SFGATE Thursday. “It remains a key priority from our parks master plan and something we continue to work on.”

Elliot and other city staff called a meeting at Santa Cruz’s London Nelson Community Center on Wednesday night to gather community feedback about the possibility of replacing the city’s BMX ramps with its first pickleball courts. 

“The purpose of the meeting was for city Parks and Rec to gather input and perspective and feedback on the Depot Bike Park and whether to explore pickleball [there] or not,” he explained. “This isn’t the pickleball community trying to take over but Parks and Rec trying to gather community input on all sides of this issue.”

The meeting, he said, “went well.” One of the biggest revelations was the number of BMX faithful that rallied for their park, which first opened in 2009.

“It was really clear for the community that there’s a strong desire to keep Depot Bike Park there, and in keeping it there, there’s a lot of opportunity to increase the use to allow beginner or intermediate level riders to utilize the park,” he said of the meeting. 

One such community member was BMX rider Andrew Clifton. Lookout Santa Cruz reported that Clifton expressed concern about how young riders are often forced to leave the city so that they can become skilled enough and come back to the park. “It’s not fair that the kids today don’t have the resources to build their skills,” he said at the meeting. 

“Right now it’s an expert-level park,” Elliot told SFGATE. “The goal is to maximize use to introduce a variety and range of features for kids and all ranges of ages and skill levels. We heard that loud and clear from community members.”

For his part, Mark Dettle, the president of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club, which he described as a “fast-growing nonprofit” to promote the sport in the area, spoke at the meeting in favor of installing four courts on the relatively small footprint of the bike park — if that was the desire of the community at large.

On Thursday, Dettle told SFGATE that after attending the meeting, he wasn’t too concerned about losing four potential courts and would even support the BMX park staying intact. 

“We’ve been working with Parks and Rec on a couple locations,” he explained. “They just haven’t panned out, and there are multiple agencies involved. … We’re happy to work with them to find a good overall solution.”

Elliot said the city is well aware of pickleballers’ desire for the city to broaden the footprint beyond the four new proposed courts where the BMX park is now — and he noted there are other, potentially bigger, sites currently being vetted for pickleball facilities. 

“Right now we’re working on three different other sites,” Elliot said. “One in San Lorenzo Park, considering that through the San Lorenzo Park redesign. The Harvey West Park, we’re considering through that redesign. And we are exploring a partnership with UC Santa Cruz for dedicated pickleball courts on their property.”

In the end, Dettle acknowledged the need for pickleballers to be patient as they expand their footprint, especially on spaces in Santa Cruz that are reserved for what Elliot considers one of the town’s three “core sports.”

“At city Parks and Rec, we see and value these core elements of our character and identity, whether it’s surfing or skateboarding or biking,” Elliot said. “We have really strong relationships with those communities, but a subset of that bike community that we’ve lost contact with over the years is BMX. And now that we have made contact, we can really build that communication to build out ramps and features they want and help them into the future.”

Though a devout pickleballer now, Dettle, a longtime Santa Cruz area resident, said he “really understands” the surf/bike/skate community in the area and how necessary it is to keep places for them intact. 

“I wouldn’t take this as pickleball vs. bikes,” Dettle concluded. “When I was in Scotts Valley, raising my sons, I worked on getting the skate park. I understand what it takes to do it. A park, it’s really a lot of work and things deteriorate. I hope they get the money to repair it if that’s the best use.”

For now, the willingness for different sides to collaborate, coupled with a city that also wants to accommodate both, may be the biggest rarity in the world of pickleball domination, as recent pickleball “wars” have even ignited in places such as Santa Barbara and Manhattan.

Santa Cruz may also have something many communities across the U.S. do not, a park system so robust they can accommodate both pickleballers and everyone else. 

“The city has 50 park properties including open spaces and beaches, and that represents 1,800 acres of land,” Elliot concluded. “Within the city, there’s 32 neighborhood parks and a handful of community parks. It’s an old park system.”