Burlington’s pickleball program posted its first points on the score board earlier this week when the city’s elected leaders had an opportunity to meet the new manager of this recreational venture.
An employee of Sports Facilities Companies, Rachel Vinson began her tenure in Burlington in early September as part of a contract with the Florida firm to manage the city’s expanding interest in pickleball. It wasn’t until Monday, however, that Vinson was formally introduced to Burlington’s city council when its members received an update on the pickleball program from Tony Laws, the city’s long-time director of recreation and parks.
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During a city council work session that evening, Laws told the city’s leaders that Vinson has given a boost to the program’s administration even as construction continues on a massive new pickleball complex at Burlington’s City Park.
“She is helping us to get everything worked out to start pickleball when the courts get finished,” the city’s rec director went on to explain, “which looks like it will be November 21 right now.”
The recreation director had previously predicted an end date in a mid-September for the pickleball complex, which the council authorized nearly a year ago when it signed off on a $4.7 million contract to expand the city’s fledgling accommodations for pickleball.
In addition to the 23-court complex, this seven-figure contract also called for the development of several pickleball courts on the grounds of Burlington’s Fairchild Park. The sheer scale of these facilities eventually persuaded the city’s rec department to get some outside assistance with the program’s administration, and in the spring of this year, the council agreed to enlist Sports Facilities Companies to manage the program for an annual fee of $150,000.
Despite the belated completion of the City Park’s new pickleball courts, Vinson assured the council that she has done quite a bit since her arrival in Burlington. Among other things, Vinson said that she has rolled out a community survey to establish some parameters for the city’s new pickleball program.
“You might’ve seen that, on Friday, we posted the residents’ survey and questionnaire,” she recalled during the work session. “As of this afternoon, we had 39 responses, and we hadn’t even posted it on the city’s social media.”
