Waxahachie collecting bids for pickleball courts after Parks Board shows its support

Waxahachie Daily Light
Chris Roark, croark@cherryroad.com
February 26, 2023

The city of Waxahachie is pursuing plans for a pickleball facility after receiving support of the project from the Parks Board.

At its Feb. 2 meeting members of the board favored a plan to resurface the unused tennis courts at the Salvation Army of Ellis County, located at 620 Farley St.

This is similar to a plan presented to the City Council by the city staff at the Jan. 25 work session.

Gumaro Martinez, executive director of parks and leisure services, said the only significant difference between the plan presented at the work session and the plan moving forward is the new proposal will likely have three non-regulation-sized courts instead of four.

“We scaled it back to three courts to provide additional space and more out-of-bounds area,” Martinez said. “That way people aren’t crossing into other people’s courts during game play.”

Martinez said there is one entrance gate for the tennis facility, but the proposal calls for gates at each court.

Martinez said the staff is still collecting estimates for the project. Once those are finalized plans for the project will be presented to the City Council for a vote, perhaps as early as March 6.

During the work session Kyle Cooper, senior director of parks and recreation, said the sport continues to grow in popularity.

While interest has increased over the last several years Cooper said the COVID-19 pandemic helped its popularity even more as people were looking for outdoor activities to participate in where they aren’t too close to each other.

According to USA Pickleball the average age of core players is 47.9, and the average age of casual players is 34.3. There were 4.8 million pickleball players in 2021, a 14.8-percent increase from 2020.

Cooper pointed to several cities in North Texas that have pickleball amenities, including Midlothian and Keller. He said Southlake is constructing an $8 million pickleball complex.

During the work session Cooper provided several other possible options for a pickleball amenity in Waxahachie, such as building a facility from the ground up at an existing park. But cost was a deterrent – one estimate he received was between $630,000 and $660,000 with approximately half of that going toward the parking lot. Plus, he said noise and lights could be an issue for some of the locations that are near neighborhoods.

Cooper said the preliminary estimate for resurfacing the Salvation Army facility for three courts could be between $80,000 and $90,000.

Councilman Travis Smith said at the work session he wasn’t sold on spending $90,000 on renovating the courts for pickleball but would rather use that money to recruit a pickleball business that can bring money back to the city. Mayor Pro Tem Chris Wright said he would like to explore the possibility of working with Waxahachie ISD to use one of their facilities as a pickleball court.