An afternoon without rain or intense summer heat was just the thing to lure Chris Sams to his favorite pickleball venue at Fairchild Park on Tuesday for a few rounds of play with his college-age son.
A resident of Burlington, Sams concedes that he is quite partial to this relatively modest, six-court facility, despite the concerted efforts that city officials have made to steer residents to a much grander, multimillion-dollar complex at Burlington’s City Park.
“We went there for opening day,” Sams conceded in between serves on Tuesday afternoon. “And we haven’t been back since. We like playing in Fairchild Park because that’s where the people are.”
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Sams isn’t alone in his partiality for Fairchild over the City Park’s much vaunted complex, and this widespread preference has forced Burlington’s municipal leaders to rethink their entire game plan for the larger facility.
Last week, Burlington’s city council decided to rectify this imbalance by making it easier for out-of-town residents to access the City Park 17-court complex, which they had originally hoped to preserve for people who live within the city’s municipal limits.
In order to ensure that city residents got their money’s worth from the complex, Burlington’s leaders had imposed several restrictions on out-of-town players before they inaugurated this facility in May. For starters, the council decreed that non-residents could only use the complex as guests of Burlington residents. Its members also demanded that out-of-town visitors fork over a $7 fee to join their in-town hosts, who would be able to access the courts for free.
Last Monday, Rachel Vinson, the city’s pickleball manager, informed the council that these measures have done much to discourage out-of-town users when she gave the council an update on the city’s pickleball program last week. She added, however, that the residency rules seem to have inadvertently depressed attendance among people who live within Burlington’s municipal limits.
Vinson recalled that, during the months of May and June, the City Park complex remained empty for roughly half of its hours of operation. Vinson went on to contrast this lackluster usage with the comparative crush of players who’ve swarmed the much smaller set of pickleball courts at Fairchild Park off of Graham-Hopedale Road.
“At Fairchild, the usage has been very high,” she acknowledged during a city council work session , “and people are not coming from there to use City Park.”
Converted from a handful of underused tennis courts, the six-court venue at Fairchild Park lacks the staff supervision of the City Park complex. The venue’s availability is also strictly first-come-first-serve – with no reservation option as at City Park. Also absent from Fairchild are any of the skills courses, camps, and other organized programs that the city’s recreation department had hoped would make City Park the premier destination for pickleball in Alamance County.
The Fairchild courts are nevertheless free of charge to all comers – regardless of whether they live in Burlington or some other community.
Tony Laws, the city’s recreation director, conceded that the lack of restrictions has made Fairchild a greater draw for both residents and nonresidents than the flagship pickleball complex at City Park.
“We thought the restrictions at City Park we’re good because residents got the advantage,” he added during last Monday’s city council work session. “But they want to go where all their friends are playing.”
In the hope it would increase the allure of the City Park complex, the council gave city staff members the go-ahead to nix the restriction on out-of-towners who aren’t guests of Burlington residents. The council also agreed to reduce the “drop-in” fee for non-residents from $7 to $3 – with both changes slated to take effect on August 1.
In tandem with these two measures, the recreation department will also begin to offer pickleball “memberships” to people from outside of Burlington. The department currently allows the city’s residents to purchase these memberships for $20 a month in order to avail themselves of the skills courses and other programs at the pickleball complex. The department plans to charge out-of-towners $30 a month for this same privilege, although in their case, the membership will also entitle them to play without paying the $3 fee.
None of these changes will have any impact on the free, unfettered access that both residents and non-residents currently have at Fairchild Park. Nor did this egalitarian treatment raise any objections from council members like Dejuana Bigelow, who acknowledged that Fairchild’s pickleball courts have become one of her own regular haunts.
“My family plays at Fairchild, and we have met people there from out-of-town and people from Burlington,” the council member recalled during last Monday’s work session. “We have even met people there who were holding a business meeting over pickleball.”
Read the newspaper’s editorial page views on the pickleball developments: https://alamancenews.com/burlingtons-pickleball-boondoggle-goes-from-bad-to-worse/
