By Sam Richards

Staff writer

Tuesday, March 18 (9:00 a.m.): The quest for a long-term home base for Rossmoor pickleball has been going on for almost a decade, and it’s been quite a journey, covering a lot of ground – literally.

By mid-2021, when pickleball’s popularity was exploding both nationally and within Rossmoor, there was already an established plan to expand the Creekside pickleball complex from three to seven courts in the area just north of the current outdoor courts, alongside Rossmoor Parkway. But expansion at that location was ultimately scrubbed because the ground along Tice Creek was found to be shifting, and because the parking situation there wasn’t good. That shifting ground – essentially, the area near the current courts is slowly eroding into the creek – is the main reason the current courts are on borrowed time, perhaps a few years.

A few months later, in October 2021, the GRF Planning Committee rejected a controversial plan to build new courts on the Dollar House’s  picnic grounds, an alternative that had been under consideration for more than a year.

Also considered, and ruled out, over the subsequent few years have been turning one of the courts at the Buckeye Tennis Courts complex into pickleball courts; converting one of the lawn bowling greens at Hillside; a project with the City of Walnut Creek for a joint facility at Tice Valley Park just outside Rossmoor’s gates; the former John Muir Health medical building near Safeway owned by GRF; and, at least informally, the empty former bank building across the street from Chevron gas station just outside the gates (ceiling is too low). The tennis court (failed sound study) and lawn bowling options proved unpopular not only with players of those sports, but with GRF leaders who didn’t want to take amenities from any group.

And the costs have gone up substantially, too. GRF General Manager Jeff Matheson said at the March 3 Town Hall meeting that, in mid-2021, the estimated initial cost to renovate and expand the existing pickleball courts at Creekside was about $300,000, which included money for a sound wall between the courts and Rossmoor Parkway, to reduce the noise from play. Now, the current proposal to build a partially enclosed structure next to the Event Center comes with an estimated price tag of more than $4 million. That price tag, which has already prompted calls to reconsider the project, and further increases, for any of several reasons, could accelerate such objections.

Sound studies results of the anticipated continuous thwack of paddles slamming balls haven’t convinced all neighbors that the noise won’t be a problem; at a December meeting of Walnut Creek’s Design Review Commission, commissioners acknowledged they had received several emails from Rossmoor residents concerned about noise the six new covered courts would produce. Such concerns had not been completely alleviated by the time the March 3 Pickleball Town Hall event convened, and several attendees said they were still concerned about noise, property values and comprising their bucolic views of the golf course.

Plans for the pickleball structure near the Event Center are approaching a key date. Chip Griffin, a senior planner for the City of Walnut Creek, said the city’s Planning Commission is scheduled to review the Rossmoor project at its meeting Thursday, March 27, at 6 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall, 1666 N. Main St. downtown. The commission that night could either approve the project, reject it or “continue” it, delaying a final determination. The construction phase of the project, whenever that would begin, involves it own set of permit approvals, Griffin said.