As they promised last weekend, opponents of Seattle Parks‘ plan to convert Lincoln Park‘s former tennis courts into pickleball courts came back today for a larger protest rally.
Their main concerns remain two-fold: That pickleball is too noisy for an area of the park where birds roost and nest in trees and people come for refuge from urban bustle, that possible lighting of the courts would also disrupt wildlife and that Seattle Parks made the court-conversion decision without environmental review and public input.
To recap – we reported in August, after a reader tip, that Parks planned to add pickleball striping to three of nearby Solstice Park‘s six courts during resurfacing work. At the time, the resurfacing work was considered imminent. But it hadn’t happened by the time Parks announced a change in plan in mid-September – that it would create six pickleball-only courts on the former tennis courts in the north part of the park, long used for storage. Solstice, Parks said, would remain tennis-only. Both these protesters and pickleball players said soon after that they would like to see Parks go back to the previous plan.
We counted about 60 people at the gathering’s peak. The protesters waved signs along Fauntleroy Way for a while before marching and chanting to the planned court site, where they gathered for speeches, by both organizers and by park users who spoke passionately about the solace they take in visiting it.
(Video added below, 7:33 pm)
They acknowledged a youth soccer match happening next to the court and described children’s laughter as a welcome sound, unlike the sound of pickleball, a recording of which was played at one point during the gathering, They also talked strategy, since so far Parks has not granted their request to have a public-comment period on the court-conversion plan. They plan to continue gathering names on an online petition, as well as emailing politicians and political candidates, from the City Council to Congress. Parks, meantime, plans to put an informational sign at the site this week, according to a brief discussion at this past week’s Morgan Community Association meeting, and Parks told us last week – after one activist launched an “occupation” – that a “work zone” will be created at the site.
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