Pickleball’s dominance of landscapes residential and commercial, in Austin and everywhere, has continued largely unabated over the past few years. A dustup at last week’s Austin Planning Commission meeting, however, offered a glimpse at the rare exception to the recreational activity’s rule.
Austin Pickle Ranch's request to rezone Hartland Plaza at 1717 West Sixth Street to permit the continued operation of its rooftop courts was met by vociferous opposition by the building’s West Austin neighbors, the Austin Monitor reported.
The property was not zoned for outdoor sports and recreation use when Austin Pickle Ranch opened its eight courts on top of the four-story office building and parking garage in fall 2023, according to the article. It had a good run for a zoning outlaw, but the city shut it down in June of this year.
Old West Austin neighbors met the company’s request to rezone the property with concerns about light, noise, and traffic, about which many spoke at the meeting, the Monitor reported:
“It’s a noise and light issue mostly; the lights and the repetitive impulse sound of the pickleball have been disrupting the neighbors,” Donna Osborn said, representing the Old West Austin Neighborhood Association (OWANA). “The neighbors wish that the pickleball court would be enclosed to mitigate the light and the noise.”
“The sound (from the building) is an incessant, high-pitched popping of paddles hitting balls from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. at night, seven days a week. It is not a train passing in the night. It is all day long. … It’s the first thing I hear in the morning, along with the yelling of excited players, and the last thing I hear at night,” Rob Miller, a local resident, said.
“This illegally built building affected our daily lives. I could hear pickleball through my noise-canceling earbuds while I was gardening,” Beverely Dunn, a local resident, said.
“The courts are lit, in effect, with tennis court tower lights, only they are four stories up in the sky,” Miller said. “The jarring glare shines into my yard and into my house, into my kitchen, through the dining room, and into my living room. We requested light shields be installed and some were, but inexplicably not on all the light towers. Until the city shut the facility down … I still had the lights shining into my property every single day until they went off at 10:15 p.m. on a timer.”
After conferring with Pickleball Sound Mitigation Consulting (who knew?), OWANA asked that the property owner be required to install 10-foot-tall sound barriers on the west and north sides of the building. The owner agreed to the north barrier but proposed a U-shaped barrier rather than an entire wall to mitigate sound from the west side of the building.
“We are down to slight differences in noise studies and slight differences in mitigation technique,” Richard Suttle, representing the owner, said. The owner contends that a full west wall would block views and is unnecessary. OWANA’s acoustic consultant, PSM's Barry Wyerman, said that leaving any area on the west wall exposed could result in higher sound levels. Austin Pickle Ranch’s own pickleball sound consultant said that the proposed U-shaped alternative would suffice, reducing the noise to levels inaudible to neighbors.
Austin Pickle Ranch expressed willingness “to reduce the lights from 5,000 Kelvin to 3,000 and fully shield the lights, and we think that ought to get the light out of the neighborhood,” Suttle said. The lights are already shielded, although one neighbor stated that some of that shielding has been removed.
Ultimately, the Planning Commission kicked the decision to its September 24 meeting in hopes that the neighborhood and Austin Pickle Ranch could come to an agreement on their own.
