It is time to put some skin in the game.
At the last Town of Barrhead council meeting, councillors received a request from the Barrhead Pickleball Club asking the municipality to develop a permanent six to eight court pickleball facility at the old tennis court site, which is currently being used as a skateboard park.
This doesn’t come as a surprise, because representatives from the club alluded the location was their preferred location when they visited council April 23, basically asking them for the same thing, the creation of a permanent pickleball facility.
At that meeting, they also inferred they would be willing to foot some of the costs involved in constructing the facility, but until a location was chosen for the facility that would be difficult.
Since we have never tried to fundraise to build a recreational facility, we will take their word for it.
The letter addressed to parks and recreation director Shallon Touet states the pickleball club would be happy to set up a committee to work with the site to adapt to Barrhead’s needs, with no mention of how they planned to help pay for the facility.
We believe the club should be expected to pay for the lion’s share of the construction costs, which could be as much as $250,000 based on the construction of the pickleball courts in Cold Lake.
That is a lot of money for something that can only be used for six months at best. Nor do we believe it is utterly necessary because the town already has a six to eight court outdoor pickleball facility, albeit not permanent.
Admittedly, it comes with a few challenges, but they are not insurmountable.
From our understanding, the two biggest issues the club has with the ice rink is that it is difficult to clear water off the courts after a rain and they continually have to set up and take down their nets. However, with the help of parks and recreation, we are sure a better way can be found to deal with the water. As for the nets, that is up to the membership.
If they still feel a separate facility is required, may we suggest they come to a similar agreement that the Barrhead Bowling Association came up with when they built Blue Heron Bowl? The town donated the land and the association, or the pickleball club, in this case, came up with the bulk of the funding.
Yes, we know pickleball proponents will point to the town paying for aquatics centre, the agrena, and to a certain point the curling rink before asking “Why not us too?”
Like it or not, there is a certain level of recreation that traditionally falls to municipalities to provide. Ice arenas, curling rinks, swimming pools, multi-use courts, tennis, basketball and parks usually falls to municipalities, while pickleball, beach volleyball, lawn bowling and traditional bowling are generally up to local users.
