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Carbondale’s weekly
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Volume 11, Number 32 | September 19 2019
Pickleball grows up
A road grader operator on Sept. 5 begins to level the ground where six new pickleball courts will be constructed at the North Face Park on Meadowood Drive. The grand opening will be June 2020. Photo by Trina Ortega
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By Trina Ortega Sopris Sun Correspondent To meet the growing interest in what NBC news recently claimed is the fastest growing sport in the world, the Roaring Fork Pickleball Association and town of Carbondale broke ground early this month on the construction of six new pickleball courts at the North Face Park on the south edge of town. The 1/4-acre site, next to the tennis courts, skate park and athletic fields on Meadowood Drive, will be home to six new post-tension courts that adhere to size guidelines (minimum 1,800 square feet) for sanctioned tournament play. “With these new courts and the existing makeshift courts, we’ll now have 12 courts available,” Roaring Fork Pickleball Association (RFPA) member Jim Noyes said. “We’ll have the biggest pickleball facility between Grand Junction and Arvada. We are going to be able to stage some of the biggest tournaments on the Western Slope.” The six new courts have an estimated price tag of $300,000, according to Noyes, who is heading up the fundraising campaign. The town provided land for the new courts, but all of the money has been raised by the RFPA. The association has garnered $240,000 in private donations and foundation grants to date and is still in the midst of its fundraising campaign. Early architectural design work was done pro bono by Jeff Dickinson; Satank builder Jeff Wadley is handling the general contracting on a voluntary basis; and landscape architect Rich Camp also provided expertise at no cost. In terms of construction, Wadley says the courts are a fairly straightforward project. Evergreen Tennis Court Systems based in Loveland will do the post-tension concrete work, and the prep work and post work (sidewalks, reinstalling sprinklers, re-seeding grass) will be completed by the town or local contractors who bid the jobs. As of Sept. 12, crews had cleared out a rectangle to fit the 11,439 square feet of post-tensioned concrete plus room for new sidewalks around the courts. (A patio area with benches and shade will be available to all park-users and is part of the design plan, but not part of phase 1 fundraising.) The soil will be compacted, brought down to grade, the court footprint filled in with substrate, and concrete poured for the courts. In spring 2020, the courts will get surfaced with a high-tech epoxy finish and be ready for play. The grand opening is scheduled for June 2020, when the association also aims to host a large tournament. Wadley said the association will still have access to — and will need — the existing tennis courts for pickleball tournaments. “At tournaments, we can have up to 150 or 180 players per day, so we’re going to need the hotels and the restaurants and everybody in the community. I’m working with the chamber of commerce to raise awareness about our new amenity,” Wadley said. PICKLEBALL continued on page 7
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