Seattle Parks and Recreation has just released a new draft version of its Parks and Open Spaces Plan. The previous version of this plan dates from 2017.
This updated version contains amongst other things:
- A trend analysis to determine the demand for future recreational facilities and programming;
- A needs analysis to assess the park, recreation, and open space needs of the community and translating that information into a framework for meeting the physical, spatial, and facility requirements to satisfy those needs;
- A gap analysis;
- And of course, a “planning for the future” section that talks about “acceptable level of service standards”.
Trend Analysis
The Past
The pickleball trend is clear: The number of pickleball players has been growing exponentially.
In late 2016, Seattle Parks developed a plan to paint pickleball lines for a single pickleball court on each of two tennis courts, using the tennis net as the pickleball net. Pickleball players caught wind of this dreadful plan and talked Seattle Parks into adding pickleball court lines for 24 pickleball courts in seven locations, using portable pickleball nets because the city couldn’t afford anything else. That plan was implemented in summer and fall 2017.
In spring 2017, when Seattle Parks released the draft of its Parks and Open Spaces Plan for public comment, that draft barely mentioned pickleball at all. Pickleball players were very vocal about this when the Board of Parks and Recreation commissioners held a public meeting about the draft. Seattle Parks, in its infinite lack of wisdom, attempted to placate pickleball players by adding to the final version of its Parks and Open Spaces plan that it was about to paint lines for 24 pickleball courts. Twenty-four courts over six-years: That was the last plan. We all know how it turned out.
The Present
Here we are in 2024, and Seattle Parks has had to triple the number of pickleball courts it had planned to paint on tennis courts from 2017 to 2023, and it is still not satisfying the current demand. Seattle Parks’ poor planning also caused it to provide semi-permanent pickleball nets for less than a quarter of the 80 pickleball courts on tennis courts. Many more nets were purchased by the pickleball community. Many so called pickleball “courts” still lack a semi-permanent pickleball net.
The previous plan clearly inadequately identified the trend as far as pickleball was concerned. Is the new plan going to do any better?
The new plan is confusing the casual observer as far as pickleball goes. It has a chart that indicates “average number of annual participants for the period between 2017- 2021” and this shows tennis players numbers being five times bigger than pickleball players numbers. However, average numbers are not appropriate to report exponential growth. If Seattle has 2 rats in January, 4 rats in February, 8 in March, and so on, it will end up having 4096 rats by December. Telling you that Seattle had an average of 683 rats over the year won’t prepare you for the 16 million rats you should expect by the end of the following year if the trend continues. Since we are in 2024 and the plan’s numbers of participants are based on the years 2017 to 2021, this is more like telling you that Seattle had an average of 64 rats over the first 8 months of the year and letting you guess what the number of rats will be by the end of the following year. (Answer: Still 16 million)
To its credit, the new plan shows a chart that acknowledges that, in King County, the number of pickleball players was almost matching the number of tennis players by mid-2022.
The Future
Even though the number of pickleball players grew at an astronomical rate over the last seven years and was almost equal to the number of tennis players by mid-2022, the current plan estimates that by 2050 the number of tennis players will still be greater than the number of pickleball players. In other words, even though the number of Seattle pickleball players has been growing exponentially over the last seven years, Seattle Parks’ new Parks and Open Spaces Plan forecasts linear growth from now on.
Conclusion
Seattle Parks failed to plan for the growth of pickleball in its previous Parks and Open Spaces Plan and is about to fail again in its new plan.
The new plan assumes that the number of Seattle pickleball players will grow slowly from now on, while all evidence points to fast growth for at least several more years. Instead, it should model two futures: one with fast growth and one with faster growth.
Needs Analysis
Pickleball overflow
Just look at the number of people waiting in line to play pickleball outdoor during peak hours at Green Lake, Miller Playfield, Walt Hundley Playfield, Mount Baker Playfield, etc. and it will be clear that the demand for outdoor pickleball courts at these locations far exceeds the supply.
Look at the number of people waiting in line to play pickleball indoor during the rainy season at the Bitter Lake Community Center, Northgate Community Center, Rainier Community Center, Queen Anne Community Center, etc. and it will be clear that the current demand for indoor pickleball courts at those locations far exceeds the current supply.
Raw numbers
Another way to look at the current supply of outdoor pickleball courts is to compare it to the supply of outdoor tennis courts. Given that Seattle currently has about as many tennis players as pickleball players, and given that Seattle Parks claims that tennis players do not have enough courts, it makes sense to expect Seattle to currently need at least as many pickleball courts as the number of tennis courts it currently has.
Outdoor: Tennis 115 – Pickleball 47
Seattle offers about 95 public outdoor dedicated tennis courts. Tennis players also have access to about 40 tennis courts they share with pickleball players. Since these shared courts don’t have the same tennis-value as a dedicated tennis court, let’s discount their value by half. This gives us a total of (95 + 40 =) 135 actual tennis courts, and a real value of about (95 + (40 / 2) =) 115 tennis courts.
To make it simple, let’s say that Seattle has 5 public outdoor dedicated pickleball courts, even though most of those are far from adequate. Seattle also has lines for about 84 pickleball courts that they share with tennis and badminton players. For simplicity’s sake, we will ignore that some of those shared courts do not include pickleball nets, have inadequate lines and other related impediments. Using the same discounting factors as above, we get a total of (5 + 84 =) 89 actual pickleball courts, with a real value of about (5 + (84/2) =) 47 pickleball courts.
Indoor: Tennis 2,000 – Pickleball 350
We can perform a similar analysis for indoor courts. Tennis players have access to 20 regulation-sized public indoor tennis courts at the Amy Yee Tennis Center and the Sandpoint Tennis Center that are available from very early in the morning to very late in the evening, most days of the year. A rough estimate would be that these 20 courts are open about 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a total of almost 2,000 indoor tennis court hours per week, all year long. By contrast, Seattle Parks’ public indoor pickleball courts offering consists of a tangled mess of community center courts, a lot of which do not have adequate lines, adequate nets, or a regulation-size play area, and which are available each a few hours a day, a few days a week at the most, mostly between the hours of 10am and 2pm, mostly Monday to Friday, mostly not during school holidays. A rough estimate is that Seattle Parks offers about 350 indoor pickleball court hours per week, mostly between the hours of 10am and 2pm, mostly Monday through Friday, mostly when school is in session.
To be fair, we need to add that tennis players need to pay to access the public indoor courts. The indoor pickleball fee that Seattle Parks used to charge has been waived since 2017.
Looking at these raw numbers, it is clear that Seattle Parks is far from meeting pickleball players’ current needs, let alone their future needs.
Culture
Wherever you travel as a pickleball player, it is fairly easy to find a place to join a game: just find a place that has open play and show up. The same cannot be said for tennis. All over the country, Parks departments have rules that encourage open play for pickleball. Seattle Parks insists on having rules that stifle open play. Those rules are an hinderance to meeting the needs of the pickleball community and would also be appropriate to address in a plan.
The Plan
So, what is Seattle’s new Parks and Open Spaces Plan’s perspective on the needs of its pickleball players? Unfortunately, even though the plan states the purpose of the need analysis to be “to assess the park, recreation, and open space needs of the community and translating that information into a framework for meeting the physical, spatial, and facility requirements to satisfy those needs”, its “needs analysis” section is all about counting how many acres of park are available per 1,000 residents, and how many residents are within a 10-minute walk to a park. There is absolutely nothing here about the current or future needs of pickleball players. There is nothing here about how many indoor or outdoor pickleball courts the city should have per 1,000 residents, or how many residents should have access to a pickleball court within a 10-minute walk. When did the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department become the Seattle Parks and No Recreation Department?
Gap Analysis
Seattle’s Parks and Open Space Plan’s “Gap Analysis” section, just like its “Needs Analysis” section focuses on access to parks. There is no mention of recreation.
If you don’t analyze your recreational needs, you can’t analyze the gap between your current recreational offering and the current or future recreational needs of your constituency. Which means you don’t have to plan anything new. How convenient!
Planning for the Future
The “Planning for the Future” section of the plan starts with “The 2024 Parks and Open Space Plan will guide SPR through the year 2030.”
Sadly, even though this section is supposed to propose “level of service” standards, there is no plan to be found for improving current indoor or outdoor pickleball facilities. The closest it gets to it is by mentioning a “possible target goal” for “delivering equitable access to key facilities” such that “80% of all residents will rate their access to desired outdoor facilities, such as tennis and basketball courts, as Good or Excellent.” Unfortunately, it also says that “SPR is evaluating how to increase capacity within the system, taking a strategic and cost-effective approach to providing equitable access for all to key facilities rather than through the construction of new facilities.”
To be fair the “Key Capital Funding Sources and Funded Projects” section of the plan lists “Dedicated Pickleball Courts Construction” and “Appendix D – Capital Improvement Plan” lists “Construction of 1-2 large-scale dedicated pickleball facilities” as having started in 2023. Both of those most likely refer to the current effort to create a facility with about 8 dedicated pickleball courts at Magnuson Park. Even if Seattle Parks manage to build those courts in the next 6 years, it will be a drop in the bucket, which they would know if they had done a proper need analysis and gap analysis.
Conclusion
As far as pickleball is concerned, this plan is not even worth a pickle.
If you read this far, you might also like Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail.