UES Pickleball Battle Highlights Scarce Open Space In Dense District

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The skyrocketing popularity of the ball-and-paddle sport known as pickleball has sparked confrontations across the city, with parents and players swatting at each other from the West Village to Hell's Kitchen.

And like in other neighborhoods, pickleball drama has taken over Upper East Side parks, as first reported by Upper East Site, sparking a low-key turf battle between other park goers, parents, children and ardent players of the sport.

At a Community Board Eight meeting Wednesday night, the board voted to endorse a Parks Department plan to relocate, but codify, three pickleball courts established unofficially in Carl Schurz Park by a mysterious "doctor."

Pickleball courts, according to the proposal, would be made permanent and moved to the south side of the multipurpose play area, allowing for an open space between the pickleball and basketball courts, ultimately taking up less space than their current configuration.

The issue highlights one of the most enduring conditions of the densely populated Silk Stocking District: a dramatic lack of open space. Citywide, the district ranks nearly last in park and playground space per-capita.

Some think the community should look to create more open space rather than pit the interests of pickleball fans and children against each other, forcing them to fight over the small amount of open, public space currently available.

"The duty of adults"

At Wednesday night’s Community Board Eight meeting, numerous pickleball advocates, including State Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright’s son, thanked the Parks Department for its proposal.

But players also asked: instead of three courts, why not four?

If placed closer together, an additional court would only take up a bit more room, they argued.

Pickleball devotee Phillis Wallach said they are also hoping to get lighting for the courts so games could go on later in the day.

“Pickleball — it's going to be the next Olympic sport. It's not a fly-by-night thing,” she told the board.

But another resident, former State Assembly Candidate Patrick Bobilin, said he found the efforts to codify the courts “troubling,” describing their efforts as “organizing to take away space from kids in Carl Schurz Park in order to play Pickleball.”

Children, Bobilin said, can’t vote and are unlikely to advocate for themselves in front of a community board meeting, giving the pickleball players a seeming advantage when lobbying for their desires.

Players told the Community Board in both meetings that players defer to kids when conflicts arise, but Bobilin said it’s not the job of young children to ask adults for space.

“That's why it's the duty of adults and the community at large to protect them, to provide for them and give them an abundance of opportunities to socialize and enjoy public space,” he said.

A lack of Upper East Side parks

City Council District Five, which encompasses the eastern portion of the neighborhood, ranks 47 out of the 51 council districts in park and playground space per resident, according to a 2015 study from New Yorkers For Parks.

Only three percent of the district is park land, the same report says. And the Upper East Side only has 1.7 acres of park and playground space for every 1000 children, far below the citywide average of 13.3 acres. And for the senior population, it’s a similar story.

Bobilin thinks that the pickleball players, instead of fighting over existing space in a neighborhood severely lacking it, should place their efforts towards creating more open space through more parks or neighborhood open streets.

“Protecting our space for kids should be our first priority, adult leisure practices falling lower on this list,” said Bobilin. “I'm asking this board to leave the park alone, and if these adults need more space, get it through open streets.”

Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy and organizing at Open Plans, a livable streets non-profit group, told Patch that the pickleball pickle in the Upper East Side is a perfect microcosm of why the city needs to get more public open space.

The pandemic has brought even more New Yorkers to appreciate the city’s outdoor spaces, and as the weather gets warmer, conflicts over that limited resource can get intense.

“It was 60 degrees yesterday and people want to be outside,” Chabot told Patch, “and that does lead to potentially more conflict and more tension.”

“It's not necessarily about choosing one thing versus the other, nor about pitting adults versus children. It's about how do we create space for everyone,” Chabot said.

Open Streets, Chabot said, “could be a wonderful use for pickleball players, it could also be a wonderful space where children learn how to ride their bikes.”

Just steps from the increasingly crowded park are potential candidates “worth entertaining,” Chabot said, for future Open Streets or even pedestrian plazas, like nearby dead end streets at East 83rd Street, Gracie Square and Gracie Terrace.

“This is not just about pickleball versus children,” he said, “this is about how to make safe, joyful public spaces.”

"A deterrent for kids"

In the meantime, one parent says all the pickle-play has scared off the neighborhood kids who have just given up on going to Carl Schurz Park.

When the Parks Department’s plan to codify the pickleball doctor’s three-court claim was presented to the neighborhood’s Parks Committee last week, a local father said that the city would be rewarding bad behavior, and reducing space for kids and other park-goers.

“It has become a deterrent for kids to come and play in the park,” the father, who only identified himself as Joel, said. “You used to have 50 kids running around in that same area where 12 — mostly adults — are now playing.”

He even claimed that kids are no longer playing at all in the park’s lone surfaced open space, since the three nets, first set up by a pickleball evangelist known only as Albert the Pickleball Doctor, stay up from sunrise to sundown.

The city’s Parks Department actually banned pickle play at a West Village playground last December after similar concerns.

“There’s no other reason why the kids are not playing there,” Joel said.

Pickleball devotees cite Albert as a hero who brought pickleball. The pickle doctor was recently photographed at a Greenpoint pickleball center, along with some of the other pickleball advocates attending the Upper East Side meeting, for a glossy New York Magazine spread.

Devotees of the paddle sport in Carl Schurz Park claim that even non-players love the sport and often kids approach paddlers in the park to ask how they can play.

Several players told the board how pickleball has rejuvenated and changed their lives, with multiple people claiming the game has gotten them off the couch and active in the community for the first time in years.

According to the parks department, the new courts won't be installed until at least spring 2024.