Contact City Council and Staff_ Parks and Recreation_RedactedFrom:Thornton, Jonathan
To:
Cc:ContactCoB; Rhodes, Alison; Thornton, Jonathan; Council
Subject:Contact City Council and Staff: Parks and Recreation
Date:Monday, July 1, 2024 9:20:04 AM
Attachments:image001.png
Thank you for asking about an indoor tennis facility. All nine members of the City Council
have received your message and you might hear from one of them individually. On
behalf of city staff I wanted to provide some information. My name is Jonathan Thornton
and I handle communications for Boulder Parks and Recreation. Thank you for your
grace with our reply as it is peak season for our team and we are very busy.
With the 2022 BPR Plan, we committed to completing a Court System Plan (CSP) to
analyze and evaluate the city’s tennis and pickleball courts. This plan is nearly
complete, and we will present the final plan at the July Parks and Recreation Advisory
Board meeting. The recommendations of that plan include:
Building up to 22 new dedicated pickleball courts (we currently have zero
dedicated pickleball courts and this sport is played on seven tennis courts with
pickleball lines painted on them).
Constructing 22 new dedicated tennis courts.
Investing in our existing sport courts.
We have prioritized three of our existing parks as locations for these new courts over the
next six years in our capital improvement program (CIP) to hopefully reach the target of
44 courts: East Boulder Community Park (2025), Valmont (2028) and Tom Watson
(2030).
While the courts at East are funded, the others are just recommended at this time. There
are other unmet needs across the system and so these recommendations will be
considered as future budgets are developed.
For an indoor sport court facility, and also as outlined in the 2022 BPR Plan, there is not
funding for new facilities nor has BPR historically provided indoor tennis. Despite that,
we do anticipate exploring partnerships to meet this ask from the community. There may
be a short-term option as courts are developed at East Boulder Community Park in 2025
and we are of potential community partnerships that could make building and operating
a temporary indoor structure feasible.
Organization: N/A
Topic: Parks and Recreation
Comment, Question or Feedback: Hi. My name is and I am a member of the local
tennis community in Boulder. I stand before you today to highlight a critical issue that is
unfolding in our city. While tennis is experiencing a resurgence nationwide, Boulder is
witnessing a dramatic shrinkage in publicly available tennis courts. Despite being one of the
top three most active tennis metro areas in the country, Boulder has not added a single new
public tennis court in over thirty years. This is unacceptable given our growing population and
increasing demand for recreational spaces. One of the most pressing issues is the complete
lack of publicly accessible indoor courts. This winter will be the first in decades without any
indoor courts available to the public, leaving the tennis community with no place to play. The
current plan to add up to 3 net new tennis courts at East Boulder Rec Center in the coming
years is insufficient and fails to address the immediate and long-term needs of our community.
Furthermore,...
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[[FSF080521]] Submission ID is #: 1237525188