Plan to reduce shared pickleball courts in Seattle gets delayed

Advantage, pickleball.

Nearly two months after Seattle Parks and Recreation announced a plan to convert 36 courts with pickleball lines back to tennis only, the change is on hold.

On Monday, the parks department posted an online update to its Outdoor Racquet Sports Strategy calling for four additional public meetings from June 23-30. After our initial round of engagement, it was evident more dialogue was needed," said Christina Hirsch, a spokesperson for Seattle Parks.

The move follows an outcry from local pickleball players, who anticipated the loss of nearly 40% of the city's public courts where they can play Washington's official state sport as early as June 22.

"This is a first-step win," said Tony Pisa, president of the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association, which has led local advocacy efforts. "Our main goal was to pause or move this plan back and have (Seattle Parks) readjust it with the bigger goal of getting equity for pickleball and tennis."

The strategy, which has been in the works for roughly two years, attempted to resolve an uneasy coexistence. Historically, all of Seattle's public outdoor racket sports courts were striped for tennis, which has been played in the city's parks for a century. According to the city-owned Amy Yee Tennis Center, there are over 100 reservable outdoor tennis courts in Seattle.

Pickleball, although invented on Bainbridge Island in the 1960s, has grown in popularity more recently. By some measures, pickleball is now more widely played in the Emerald City than tennis. Although definitive empirical data is scarce, anecdotal reports abound of packed pickleball courts and less busy tennis courts.

Seattle Parks began painting pickleball stripes on tennis courts in 2017 to accommodate growing demand, a treatment known as "dual striping," but paused the practice in 2024. Today, it maintains five dedicated outdoor pickleball courts and 87 dual striped with tennis, according to the strategy. As a result of dual striping, some courts became de facto pickleball-only, even if, on paper, they are shared with tennis.

The stopgap approach, however, has many detractors.

"I find dual-striped courts very frustrating to play on," said West Seattle resident Heather Slee, who plays tennis up to four times per week. "When you are in the middle of a good rally, especially in doubles, it's distracting to have multiple lines on the sides of the court."

In an attempt to resolve this tension, the strategy called for a permanent divorce - all public courts would be designated either pickleball-only or tennis-only.

As a result, places like Miller Playfield, already a pickleball hot spot, would be officially designated as such. But others, like Alki Playground and Rainier Beach Playfield, would revert to tennis. Those changes stung particularly because of the loss of illuminated courts, leaving West Seattle and a large swath of South Seattle without a public, outdoor option for evening play. The proposed reversion to tennis-only at Rainier Beach also would have upended one of the regular venues for Diversity & Inclusion in Pickleball, a volunteer initiative that teaches pickleball in underserved communities.

In May, the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association presented a counterproposal that calls on Seattle Parks to maintain dual-use courts until sufficient new pickleball-only courts are built. An accompanying petition netted 3,500 signatures, according to Pisa.

"All feedback on the proposed strategy is under consideration," Hirsch said. "There is a very high volume of feedback that we are continuing to review."

Hirsch also said that Seattle Parks "didn't have a set date for implementation because we wanted to go through the public engagement process," and explained that June 22 "was a date identified in response to a public inquiry about a hypothetical earliest implementation date assuming the draft strategy was widely supported."

Pisa concedes that dual striping "isn't optimal," but in the absence of a plan to build more dedicated pickleball courts, he said, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

While cities from Mercer Island to Renton, SeaTac to Tukwila have built outdoor, public pickleball courts in recent years, growth has been more anemic in Seattle. Potential wildlife impacts derailed a proposed slate of pickleball courts in Lincoln Park two years ago, althoughthe parks departmenthas funding to build eight courts in Magnuson Park by next year as part of an envisioned 25-court pickleball complex.

At the same time, private, indoor pickleball is booming in the Seattle area. The department's strategy notes this pattern is typical as new sports and recreation hobbies emerge. "The city's current park system and all the assets contained within it have been developed over 100 years, largely through private donations of either land or financial endowment," it reads. "When the city's system could not meet the demand for a new or existing sport within this system, private facilities either served this purpose temporarily or in perpetuity."

That trend is certainly true of tennis, which is served by numerous private clubs in the area. Even still, tennis advocates contend the city is likewise underserved for their sport. The United States Tennis Association's Pacific Northwest chapter claims the region is the fastest growing in the country for tennis, with 9.8% year-over-year growth.

"There is an infrastructure challenge in Seattle that has caused the city to be underserved versus demand," said chapter CEO Matthew Warren in a statement.

As it pertains to pickleball, Pisa said, privately owned facilities do not let Seattle Parks off the hook for failing to meet growing demand.

"There are many communities that can't afford the rates of an indoor pickleball facility," he said. "For a city to say to taxpaying citizens that the other option you have is to go pay for indoor facilities is ridiculous. It's not one versus the other, it's one and the other.

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.