Dear Editor,
Re: "More pickleball courts part of Richmond's $152M 2025 capital budget"
While I'm ecstatic to know that more pickleball courts are forthcoming in 2025, I would like to urge the city to try to get more bang for the buck for this project.
I realize that $800,000 is just the piece of the budget pie that is allotted for pickleball courts.
It is probably not based on the estimated costs of four courts. However it seems like too much money for just four courts, as Coun. Bill McNulty suggested. Surely more courts can be fit into the proposed site with the proper configuration?
After all, four courts is just the size of a single tennis court. I would hope the city will try to provide as many courts as possible while it is striving to meet the growing demand and needs of the sport in Richmond.
I point out that our neighbouring municipalities, Surrey and Delta, are way ahead of us in meeting this demand.
Delta has 19 outdoor dedicated pickleball courts and 12 additional mixed-use (tennis/pickleball) courts. Surrey has 26 dedicated courts, plus 47 mixed-use courts.
Richmond is woefully behind with just nine dedicated courts currently, and just four more proposed for next year. We have no mixed used courts.
The article mentions 700 pickleball members.
That's just 700+ association (RBCPA) members. There are many more pickleball players who are not association members.
So we're talking nine dedicated outdoor courts currently for thousands of pickleball players.
There is an urgent need to meet the fast-growing demand for more pickleball courts in Richmond.
I would hope that there will be plans to build more courts in the subsequent years beyond 2025.
As a temporary fix, Richmond should convert some of the many rarely used tennis courts throughout the city into mixed-use courts.
That would relieve some of the need while pickleballers wait for more permanent courts to be built.
Douglas Ng
Richmond
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