By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Controversial plans to locate pickleball courts at Longshore Club Park are back in the Parks and Recreation Commission’s court.

David Floyd, the commission’s chairman, in a surprise statement Wednesday night said that because of neighbors’ complaints, four pickleball courts will no longer be built, as initially proposed, close to Vista Drive and Waterside Terrace.

The town has rehired the engineering/consulting firm, Stantec of New Haven, which prepared the capital plan, to find another location in the park for pickleball courts.

He also apologized for previously saying that his commission had considered all viewpoints — and heard no opposition — regarding the proposal when asked about the approval process for the Longshore capital plan. 

That had enraged some Longshore neighbors who said they had expressed their concerns to parks and recreation officials about the courts’ proposed location.

“In retrospect, I should not have had such a narrow lens,” Floyd told Wednesday’s commission meeting.

The announcement to move the pickleball courts elsewhere on the Longshore property was a relief for neighbors, who feared the well-documented loud sounds generated by pickleball play would disrupt peaceful enjoyment of their homes and hurt their property values, Cass Shapiro, of Waterside Terrace, told the commission. 

“Thank you for being responsive to our concerns,” he said after Floyd announced the change.

Neighbor Irmi Streidt, however,  who wrote a letter to the Westport Journal criticizing how the Parks and Recreation Commission has handled neighbors’ concerns, still wanted to show the commission a map where she and her husband thought the pickleball courts could be relocated at Longshore. “I feel like we’re hostages,” Streidt, a Waterside Terrace resident, told the commission. “We’re old, if we have to sell … ”

“I’m very emotional, about this,” a tearful Streidt continued, but Floyd assured her the commission had started the process of finding a site for pickleball courts elsewhere on the Longshore property.

Peter Krieger, president of the Westport Pickleball Association, said although he understood that noisy pickleball courts shouldn’t be built near residential areas, “there is an urgent need to get more pickleball courts in Westport.”

Because town-owned pickleball courts at Compo Beach are at a site that is challenging because of wind conditions, “all the people who play pickleball [from] Westport go to other towns,” Krieger said.

Among the suggestions made at the meeting for alternate locations would be to build pickleball courts, which are smaller than tennis courts, on top of the new Parks and Recreation Department maintenance building, as has been done in New York City and other places.

Others at the meeting proposed locating the pickleball and paddle ball courts at a consolidated site, a suggestion that many in the crowd appeared to support.

New pickleball courts and construction of the new maintenance building at Longshore are among the priorities in the Longshore Capital Improvement Plan, Floyd said, and like each part of the multi-year project, will have to go before several other town bodies, including the Boards of Finance and Selectwomen, for final approval.

Volleys over community gardens postponed

Regarding another controversial topic facing the commission — the proposed relocation of Westport Community Gardens when a new Long Lots Elementary School is built — Floyd said no comments would be allowed at Wednesday’s meeting on that issue.

The commission plans to schedule “a dedicated meeting for that in the next few weeks,” he said.

The community gardens would be moved — which the gardeners say means destroying the 20-year-old plots — to make way for a new athletic field on the Long Lots property, under the initial recommendation by the Long Lots Building Committee.

The Parks and Recreation Commission would oversee new athletic fields that would be built as part of the school project on Hyde Lane.

Despite Floyd’s admonition not to bring up the community gardens at Wednesday’s meeting, brief comments nonetheless were made about their plight.

“I hope every one of you resign if those gardens are moved,” said Sal Liccione, a Representative Town Meeting member from District 9. 

Several others at the meeting also bought up the possibility of moving the gardens to the Baron’s South property, but the discussion moved on to the pickleball issue without comment from commissioners.

Unauthorized tennis court use at Longshore

Another concern brought up by Wednesday’s audience was the unauthorized use of Longshore’s tennis courts by instructors who had not registered or gotten the required insurance to use the courts. 

Out-of-towners were not only teaching tennis, but playing both tennis and paddle ball at the park, several audience members reported.

“That’s a tremendous loss of revenue for the town,” said Peter Mihalick, of Thomas Road. “People just walk onto the courts … no one checks it.”

Floyd said the commission would look into the issue, perhaps with staff stopping by the courts periodically to check hand passes of players and instructors.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.