It’s all in the details: MBLP pickleball plans have options touted
Design plans for the Town’s pickleball court complex at Mayor Bob Leonard Park is heading back to the drawing board after Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen, in a workshop before its regular meeting Thursday, Oct. 24, voiced their “frustration” at the costs of the options presented.
“I suggest this goes back to the Parks and Rec (Council),” Mayor Ron Williams said.
“We’re not there yet,” he added. “We need to go back and sharpen our pencils.”
Meanwhile, Vice Mayor Scott Meyer recommended using the option 2 with eight courts, a 25-space parking lot and be under budget by $100,000.
“It’s the same capacity we have currently,” he added.
Alderman David White recalled the Board sought to get “as many pickleball courts as we could afford, but somehow we got lost.
“We tried to put too many pigs in a sack,” he added. “We’ve gone from this option to that option to this option. I agree with Scott (Meyer),” White added. “Option 2 seems to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish in the first place — just give them as many courts as we could within the budget and everybody be satisfied. There’s even some parking there … some of these options don’t have parking.”
Brass Lantern subdivision resident George Ellis, during the Citizens Forum segment of the Board’s regular meeting, asked the Board to go with a simple design for the courts.
“We don’t need a Wimbleton pickleball court off of Watt Road,” he said.
However, Alderman Drew Burnette wanted to have 12 courts — but find ways to reduce the costs.
“Can we pinch (the fourth option) down to an acre?” he asked.
“I don’t know that we can squeeze enough out of this option to get it down to your budget,” answered David Craig, principal for landscape architecture with Ross/Fowler, P.C., and project manager on the courts project.
The workshop came about after John Ford, a Farragut pickleball player, asked for an update on the Town’s designs for the pickleball courts during his comments at the Oct. 10 Board meeting.
“As you know in the initial discussions with Ross/Fowler, I asked them to design a complex at Mayor Bob Leonard Park where the rectangle grass Field 6 currently exists along Harrison Road,” Parks and Recreation director Ron Oestreich said. “I requested the following perimeters: 10 courts with north/south alignment, a parking lot adjacent to the courts, moving the must-go lights from Harrison Road to an area in between rectangle Field 5 and the pickleball complex, so a pretty simple ask.”
He said the target budget at that time was $1.45 million, based on design and current construction projections. However, the Parks and Recreation internal team asked designers to add some amenities requested by pickleball players.
As such, Oestreich presented four design options, ranging from eight courts to 12 with such amenities as shade structures, fencing between courts and seating.
With the additional amenities and courts, “Ross/Fowler presented some potential challenges” affecting the budget and design. For instance “the new two-court design with the 25-stall parking lot, exceeds 1 acre of land, which requires the Town to include storm water mitigation,” Oestreich said.
“As you would guess, this significantly increases the potential cost of the complex due to either digging a retention pond or adding brick pavers to the parking lot,” he added.
“Both are very similar in cost. This 12-court design with all of the amenities (Option 3) exceeds our CIP budget by $522,000.”
Oestreich said Option 4 eliminates the parking lot, except for two Americans with Disabilities Act parking spots, but keeps the 12 courts.
“I would just say, very politely, that I’m very frustrated,” Alderman Drew Burnette said. “We came out with some designs.
“Now, it’s been changed in a big way again,” he added.
