(WSB photo – Nino Cantu Southwest Athletic Complex parking lot)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Seattle Parks has a new idea for where to add pickleball courts in West Seattle: The parking lot at Nino Cantu Southwest Athletic Complex.

That’s what Parks’ director of planning and development Andy Sheffer told the Fauntleroy Community Association last night.

It’s not a sure bet, though, as the parking lot is Seattle Public Schools property.

Before we get into those details – some backstory: Sheffer was invited to talk with FCA after the group’s previous meeting, last November (WSB coverage here), included a discussion with opponents of Parks’ plan to repurpose an old paved pad – once tennis courts, more recently a storage area for Parks maintenance – by setting up six pickleball courts. As FCA president Mike Dey explained in introducing Sheffer, they wanted to hear “the facts” about Parks’s plan, which first emerged in September, when Parks dropped a plan to add pickleball stripes to Solstice Park tennis courts, and drew intense opposition.

First Sheffer explained that the “next step” is a study on mitigating pickleball noise, a major point of concern for project opponents, contending the Lincoln Park courts would be disruptive both to wildlife and to people. He said this study – for which a “kickoff meeting” is imminent – involves the University of Washington Engineering Department, which is working on pickleball equipment that would reduce the noise by at least 50 percent. “Nobody ever really thought about the noise, but now that it’s a mainstream sport, they have to think about it.” (He noted later that pickleball noise concerns also include the “laughter and joy” expressed by players.) They’re also working with local wildlife/environmental advocates, he said, including Birds Connect Seattle.

But, he said then, “We are studying other sites concurrently … I’ve always had my eyes on the Southwest [Athletic Complex] parking lot.” Sheffer said he’s already had one meeting with the school district about the idea and has another one set up. He explained,, “What I’d like to see come out of that is to be able to build the same number of courts with the ability to park over [them] for the two or three big events a year.” He didn’t specify which events he was referring to; the NCSWAC is used for a variety of sports events throughout the year, plus high-school graduations, among other things, and its lot is adjacent to Parks-owned Southwest Teen Life Center and Pool.

Sheffer said they’re open to other sites but a major criteria is that a site would have to already be paved – they don’t want to pave anything that’s not; he said he’s been “scouring the city looking for impervious surfaces.” In West Seattle, he said, the Lincoln Park pad and NCSWAC parking lot “are really it” but he stressed that he’s hopeful the parking-lot idea “will go through and then we can look at other uses for Lincoln.”

If Lincoln Park remains the site, Sheffer was asked, what about its condition? One person in attendance said, “We have pictures of broken asphalt and treeroots coming up through it.” Sheffer replied, “We would patch the broken areas of asphalt and do another asphalt overlay and a top coat.” He added that the Lincoln Park site wasn’t identified for repurposing previously because Parks’ “old leadership” said it was needed as a maintenance facility, while “new leadership” decided the materials could be stored somewhere else.

Another question: What’s the rush for new pickleball courts? Sheffer replied, “We have a huge demand for pickleball … huge demand from West Seattle for sure.” So much so, he said, that existing sites are under pressure to expand – he noted, “There’s a big push to make Walt Hundley [Playfield, in High Point] more of a dedicated pickleball facility.”

What about a privately owned site, like Westwood Village, which has both a huge parking lot and two large empty indoorspaces? Sheffer said they could certainly consider that; FCA board member Marty Westerman said the suggestion had already been made to the shopping center’s owners, but they had yet to reply.

Sheffer returned multiple times to an acknowledgment of the concerns voiced previously by those opposing the Lincoln Park site (the FCA has yet to take a formal position) – “This is your park, we hear you loud and clear, you shouldn’t have to fight the city … I’ve heard a lot through this process.”

Other questions were aimed at eliciting more specifics about the study. Sheffer said it’s “kicking off” with a meeting tomorrow (Thursday, January 11th) and shouldn’t last longer than three months – “a lot of it is literature review,” he added, referring to what he said was “lots” of studies already done regarding pickleball noise.

He was asked about the best way to advocate, either for or against the pickleball project. At first Sheffer suggested people wait to see how the study turns out; later in the meeting, he suggested an online survey would be a possibility, maybe with questions such as “if noise could be reduced by 50 percent, would you be opposed?”

WHAT’S NEXT: Before leaving the meeting (which moved on to other non-Parks topics we’ll recap separately), Sheffer said his next steps would be the study, a survey, and review of other possible sites; he said the next conversation with SPS regarding Nino Cantu Southwest Athletic Complex was slated for the “third week in January.” (It should be noted that NCSWAC already has tennis courts dual-striped for pickleball, just west of the pool building.)