Pickleball players seek more courts at Veterans Park; town officials say new private facilities can meet demand

Riverhead Town needs more pickleball courts at Veterans Park in Calverton, according to a group of avid pickleball players about 160 strong who play at the park on weekday mornings. 

Other pickleball fans use the three existing courts at the park during other times of the day, with the largest number of people looking to play at the park in the late afternoon and early evening on weekdays, and even more on weekends, said player Kevin Degnan of Wading River, who organizes morning court times using a mobile app.

There were 10 or 15 people using the app to coordinate court times in the beginning, Degnan said. “We’re up to 160 people,” he said in an interview at the courts last month. That growth happened in one year, he said.

Degnan and other pickleball players who regularly play in the mornings say the town park could use at least three more courts. There’s plenty of empty space at the park adjacent to the existing courts where more courts could be built, they say.

Veterans Park is an ideal location, Degnan said. Besides the available open space, great parking facilities and proximity to other recreation assets, it’s far enough away from homes that the noise of plastic balls repeatedly hitting wooden paddles isn’t a nuisance to residents, he said. 

Degnan went to a Town Board meeting in May to ask the town to budget for building more pickleball courts at the park. “We’re very grateful for the facilities that are there,” Degnan said. “Vets Park is really becoming a great thing for community life,” he said. But the pickleball courts are really overflowing. It’s a great need.”

His request didn’t exactly get a warm reception. 

“We can look at it,” Supervisor Tim Hubbard replied. “But I’m not sure if you’re aware that a pickleball facility is being built in the old Kmart in Riverhead,” he told Degnan. 

“So that’s going to provide an additional — I’m not sure how many courts. I know it’s quite a few. So that’s an option also, and I wouldn’t want to rush out and build more town courts if, once they open up, [demand] kind of levels off,” Hubbard said.

“I have no problem if there is, if there’s a true need after the private place opens up, if there’s still a true need, I have no i no problem talking to the board and seeing what we can do, because it’s a huge sport, and the number of residents that play, it’s incredible,” he said.

The supervisor acknowledged the high demand that exists for the town courts that are available to residents.

“But let’s just take a little bit of a hold on it and see how the indoor place does,” Hubbard said. “And if there’s still a great need for it, then we can address that.”

Box Pickleball, the facility Hubbard was referring to, is planned for a 30,000-square foot portion of the former Kmart store. It will have nine courts, a kitchen and a full bar, developer Peter Bachmore of Bayport said. It will also feature a cornhole area. Bachmore said in March he was hoping for a spring opening, but it’s not yet open. The new target opening date is sometime this summer, according to Box Pickleball’s Facebook page. The company is advertising a National Pickleball Day event on Aug, 8, with free pickleball clinics and site tours. 

There’s no information about fees for regular memberships or court time posted on the company’s website, but it is offering “founder” lifetime memberships for $5,000. The founder memberships include unlimited court time, free unlimited open play and eight free guest passes per year, among other perks.

Another privately owned pickleball facility is coming to Tanger Outlets in Riverhead. According to the company’s website, Pickleball Smash-It will offer two acrylic courts. No membership is required and court time is $50 per hour.

Riverhead Town is also exploring the possibility of a sports facility at Veterans Park, Hubbard said. 

Council Member Ken Rothwell said at the May 22 meeting the town got a $35,000 matching grant from the state to do a feasibility study for a sports complex at Veterans Park. 

“Basically we’d be taking Veterans Memorial Park from where you’re playing now and expanding it up to as far as the 7,000 foot runway,” Rothwell said. “It’s just a tentative plan, but one of the things they do is they see, like, what’s the level of excitement in the area? Is it lacrosse fields that we need? Is it pickleball? Is it football fields, more in a tournament style?”  The consultants assess need across the region and “may say you need to build an eight, court complex, 10 court complex, to have large type of contests, like events where you can have tournaments,” Rothwell said. “And so that’s really what they look for.”

Rothwell said at the meeting that the sports complex study is “very much nearing completion, so we expect to see the results of that study in the next two weeks or so.”

Once the study is done, “the results will be brought to the Town Board as well as the recreation department and community advisory,” Rothwell said. 

“And then we’ll think about what we can do, what we can allocate to go to the next step,” Rothwell said. 

The town doesn’t have the funds to build a complex, he said, so it would potentially enter into a partnership with a private company, which would develop the facility and charge fees for its use. 

The town plans to allow a dual use of the tennis court at Bayberry Park in Wading River for pickleball, Rothwell said. The tennis court there was refinished last year and the recreation department was planning to stripe that court for pickleball.

The town has also adapted the tennis court at South Jamesport Beach for use by pickleball players as well as the deck hockey rink at Stotzky Park, the first pickleball courts offered by the town at one of its parks. Pickleball courts were first offered there in 2015, two years after the town’s Recreation Department launched a pickleball program. Riverhead held the first pickleball tournament on Long Island in the fall of 2013 and it was an instant success.

Riverhead Recreation Advisory Committee Co-Chair George Gabrielsen, who has served on the committee for 31 years, including as the town board liaison to the committee during his four-year term as a council member,  said the advisory committee has not been consulted on the study at all. 

Gabrielsen said he is curious about why the town is not using a plan for the park completed years ago, when the park was first established, as a guide for moving forward with adding new amenities at the park. 

In 2004, consulting firm Araiys Design developed a concept plan for the park. At that time, pickleball was not nearly as popular as it is today and the 2004 concept plan does not include pickleball courts. It did include six tennis courts, two beach volleyball courts and two basketball courts and four softball fields.

Gabrielsen said he agrees that the town can use more pickleball courts and other amenities, too. The recreation advisory committee maintains a capital projects list.

“The problem in Riverhead is there’s never any money for anything,” Gabrielsen said. 

That’s a long-standing problem. At one point, a dedicated recreation fund, funded by per-unit fees from residential development, was “flushed with money,” Gabrielsen said. “It had over $1 million in it.”

But the rec fund is depleted as a result of an overall decrease in residential development, as well as the town not collecting the fees for the development of some apartment buildings downtown, Recreation Superintendent Ray Coyne told RiverheadLOCAL last year. 

Gabrielsen said today that is his understanding as well.

Coyne said last summer the town had identified several priority capital projects over the years that town officials have struggled to find funding for, including bathrooms at Veterans Memorial Park necessary for the operation of a new ice rink; additional pickleball/tennis courts at several parks; and the construction of multipurpose turf fields at flagship parks. Recent capital projects have been completed using revenues received through community benefit agreements with solar companies, Coyne said.

Degnan said in an interview at Veterans Park last month that the courts there are the only “regulation size” courts the town has. That’s why they’re so popular, he said.

He notes that Southold Town has six dedicated pickleball courts at its Tasker Park facility on Peconic Lane.

Three additional pickleball courts at Veterans Park will allow players of different skill levels to use the courts simultaneously, Degnan said. That’s important, according to Degnan, because beginners get frustrated playing with more skilled players — and occasionally vice versa. Skill levels among players vary greatly. There’s one man who’s been playing the game for 25 years, Degnan said, and others who just picked up a paddle for the first time in the past year.

“It’s really a sport for all ages and abilities,” said Judy Jantzen of Shoreham, who helps coordinate players at the courts. “It’s fun,” she said. Jantzen acts as an informal leader at the site, making sure people put their paddles in a rack on the fence, which holds their place in line. “And when people come and are standing there watching, we ask them if they want to play, give them help.” It’s a very friendly group, Jantzen said. 

Other players waiting to use the courts on June 29 stressed how pickleball forms friendships and builds community. 

“We play pickleball everyday and we love it. It’s our sport. It’s our get together. I’ve made wonderful friends,” said Dolores Wallace of Riverhead, who said she’s been playing at Veterans Park for about a year. “Sometimes we play at Stotzky, sometimes at Jamesport, but usually this is our go-to place,” she said.

“It’s just a wonderful sport, and I just love pickleball,” Wallace said. 

Meredith Kramer of Baiting Hollow is a teacher and in the summer tries to play every single day. “As Dolores said, it’s a wonderful sport, great camaraderie. Meeting up with the same people, getting some exercise, it’s fun,”

The courts get “so crowded so fast,” Kramer said. 

Sue Knechtel of Wading River agreed pickleball is a great sport. “But it’s also a very, very social thing. A year ago I started playing and I didn’t know these wonderful women and now we’re really good friends.,” Knechtel said. She is also a teacher, she said, “so we kind of gravitated toward each other.”

The people who play pickleball at Veterans also help to keep the courts in shape to  play. 

“We get a ton of sand on the surface of the court all the time,”  Degnan said. So some players come to the park with leaf blowers to blow the sand off the surface, he said. 

It’s really a nice community of people, Degnan said.