Eisenhower Pickleball Courts Back Open...With Special Balls

Pickleball is coming back to Mamie D. Eisenhower Park, where four courts for the popular game were closed last year because of noise complaints.

This time around, Denver Parks & Recreation has plans to keep the sport, plagued by noisy and thwacking balls, quiet: Only foam pickleballs issued by the department will be allowed on the courts.

“You can’t use traditional pickleballs, which are plastic,” says Parks & Rec spokesperson Stephanie Figueroa. “The only form of pickleballs that can be used at this court are the Librarian Foam Pickleball, which is specifically designed to reduce noise.”

Invented by Gamma Sports, the Librarian Foam Pickleball allegedly bounces the same as a normal ball, but being made of foam rather than plastic makes hitting the ball silent rather than obnoxious.

The Parks department is officially calling the reopening of the Eisenhower courts a pilot, which began on October 25. Because the courts can be compromised by civilian shoveling, winter weather has impeded play for some of that time, but if the courts are clear and the adjacent Eisenhower Recreation Center is open, the courts are available for play.

Denver Parks & Rec closed the courts at the park at 4300 East Dartmouth Avenue last November after a series of noise-ordinance violations at four residences were found to have come from the pickleball courts. At the time, the active pickleball community at the park was devastated by the closure, requesting that the parks department try to make something work. Now, spearheaded by the department's executive directorm Jolon Clark, it has.

“Pickleball has been so popular in the last few years, and Jolon himself is a pickleball player, so he's been really involved,” Figueroa says. “There's been that back-and-forth of us trying to strike that balance of providing this amenity for residents who are begging for it, but also making sure that these residents that have homes near the parks and the courts are able to live comfortably.”
The department had previously said it would retrofit the pickleball courts into tennis courts, but it’s trying this pilot first. Figueroa says the parks team researched many options before landing on the Librarian balls and liked the idea of trying them out on established courts.

Parks & Rec purchased 96 balls. To play, picklers must check balls out from the front desk of the rec center, which will be tracking ball inventory. People don’t need to purchase a rec center membership to do so.

Because the balls are doled out by rec center staff, court hours are determined by rec center hours, which are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The Eisenhower Recreation Center is closed on Sundays.

Court compliance will be similar to that at Denver's dog parks, which operate on a green, yellow and red model based on usage violations. Green means there aren’t violations, yellow is a warning if park rangers notice violations, and red is a closure because of excess violations. In the case of dog parks, rangers clean up the parks and open them again, but the department isn’t sure what it will do if the pickleball courts reach red status, since the quiet pickleball program is a pilot.

People who use any ball other than the department-approved model could be subject to a $100 fine and potential exclusion from the courts, which are both at the discretion of park rangers, according to Parks & Rec.

“Compliance will basically determine the duration and future use of the pickleball courts,” Figueroa says, noting that the department did lots of outreach with neighbors before moving ahead with the pilot.

“When I was going around letting people know, they were excited,” she says. “It just seemed like it was kind of like a win-win for folks.”

To gauge whether the pilot is truly a win, the parks department is collecting feedback through an online survey.

Raising Cane's CEO Todd Graves might say it's a win, as he recently bought into a similar idea from Denver inventor Tom Filippini on Shark Tank: Pepper Pong, which uses foam balls instead of traditional ping-pong balls for a differently paced and quieter game.