Updated as of 4:40 p.m. on March 6 to include map.
A place where the community now plays tennis will soon be home to a new type of court — pickleball. Seventeen new courts are expected to open at Burlington City Park with six courts at Fairchild Park. However, five months have passed since the anticipated opening date in September 2024.
The $4 million project set to open in the fall has been delayed for a variety of factors such as weather and timing and has no new announced opening date, said Davis Montgomery, capital projects manager for the city of Burlington.
“It ended up making this area like one large pond,” Montgomery said. “It retained the water longer than it should have. So it took us longer for it to dry out, and then longer for us to be able to pack and do what we needed to do.”
Montgomery said another large factor in the delay is the light posts stationed around the courts. He said that the lights are not only needed for strictly pickleball but any events in the future that community members wish to host.
“We wanted these lights, these poles, to be capable of carrying Wi-Fi, speaker wire — in addition to the energy wire for the lights themselves, and any additional things that may come in the future,” Montgomery said. “We wanted them to be very functional, very flexible, which meant that we had to be very particular about what kind of poles we could use.”
Burlington resident Chad Coble, an active pickleball player, said he practices whenever he can.
“It’s friendly, and it’s not boring, and you get to meet a lot of new people. And everybody that does it loves it,” Coble said.
When Coble first heard about the construction of the Burlington courts, he immediately took to Facebook and began a public group for anticipating players in the area. The group has accumulated over 850 members.
“As soon as I heard about it, I was like, ‘We already have all these text groups. We’re meeting people, so why not have a Facebook page just for that,’” Coble said.
A main topic within the group is the opening date of the courts, which still have plenty of additions needed to be worked on — but Coble said some members have information on the court’s construction progress.
“There’s the benefit of having insider knowledge on almost everything, and we get that information immediately, because people are just, you know, ‘Oh, this happened,’ and ‘Well, this is why it happened.’”
The new courts at City Park sit in front of Willow Creek Apartments, just a few hundred feet away. Montgomery said the construction team wanted to ensure the sound from the courts and pickleballs would not make neighbors upset. A heavy, dense, soundproof material will line the fences to reduce sound from the courts.
“With neighbors this close, we wanted to do everything we possibly could. We have a natural barrier in the trees and the shrubs that are back there,” Montgomery said.
The courts at City Park will showcase more than the 17 new courts, they will also highlight local talent brought to the project — Artie Barksdale III, a freelance artist. Barksdale is the painter behind the new pickleball mural on a practice wall located next to the courts. He said the thought behind his work is aesthetics.
“It’s all about Burlington — to enhance the aesthetic, the color choice of Burlington, pickleball, and the colors blue, green, and turquoise,” Barksdale said. “It’s more about aesthetics for me, and it’s something that I want to see grow in the city of Burlington, to give the city a unique look, to set us apart from all the other surrounding cities.
Barksdale said he was chosen to paint the mural simply by word of mouth.
“You get a lot of conversations about word of mouth and artists advertising,” Barksdale said. “I think that my reputation and my integrity are what got me this mural.”
He hopes that when people come to play pickleball and tennis, they will feel a sense of pride when looking at his work.
“It gives Burlington something different outside of the norm tennis court,” Barksdale said. “Practice walls are not normally painted, so it’s not an eyesore anymore. It’s an attraction and it’s an addition to the actual ambiance of the whole court.”
With anticipation rising in groups such as Coble’s, Montgomery said he has not heard any backlash on the project.
“Most of the people — in fact, all the people that I’ve talked to — have just expressed how anxious they are and how excited they are and how they can’t wait to get it open. And how they would like to have seen them open before now but certainly can’t wait for them to open up in the spring,” Montgomery said.
Although there is no exact opening date for the courts, Montgomery said they are taking it one day at a time and figuring out solutions.
“We’re always doing it with the purpose of delivering the absolute best product we can,” Montgomery said.