Berkeley's latest downtown drama: Pickleball on the top of a parking garage

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

The trend of converting little-used parking garage rooftops to pickleball courts could be coming to downtown Berkeley, although, like most things involving the booming sport, there is opposition brewing.
Neighborhood Pickleball LLC, started by Orinda resident Jim Jenkins, is proposing to put three courts on the 6th floor of the parking garage at 2061 Allston Way, a structure that lies to the east of the Berkeley YMCA and across the street from the Mangalam Research Center and Berkeley City College.
The proposal comes as remote work has left once-full garages largely vacant. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is exploring the possibility of putting pickleball on two of its under-utilized garages — Sutter-Stockton and 5th and Mission– as use has fallen by 61% since 2018.
Other garage rooftops-to-pickleball conversions are in the works in New York, New Hampshire, Maryland and Texas.
Jenkins said that he started looking at parking garages after visiting a friend's pickleball club in Austin, Texas, which features five courts atop a car park. He said he liked the low-key community vibe, which reminded him of the early days of the pandemic when the racquet sport was just taking off — before the courts became overcrowded and in some cases hours were cut back because of noise complaints from neighbors or conflict with tennis players.
'It feels like a neighborhood park, it doesn't feel like a big pickleball facility,' he said. 'It's optimized for community and social interaction over sheer number of pickleball courts.'
When Jenkins expressed his admiration to Jay Lerner, the Austin Club owner, 'He was like 'Go back to the Bay Area and find a garage.''
'I looked at every garage from Berkeley to Oakland to San Francisco all the way down to San Jose,' Jenkins said. 'What I learned is that there is nobody parking on top of a single garage in the Bay Area. They are all dead. And many of them have closed the top several floors.'
Several of the garages don't work for pickleball because the surface is not level, but the Allston Way property is perfect and he said the owners are enthusiastic.
Jenkins says the Berkeley club would be low-key with a small membership and some corporate events. There will be an astroturf area with picnic tables, umbrellas and Adirondack chairs for socializing. The three courts would take up about one-third of the rooftop.
'I'm not doing this to be rich,' he said. 'It would be a place for folks to come and learn and grow and laugh and have a good time.'
Opposition to the high-pitched popping of pickleball paddle on plastic ball has made the sport a pariah in some neighborhoods. A campaign to eliminate pickleball from courts at San Francisco's Presidio Wall — an initiative launched by a homeowner who had her own private pickleball court — prompted the city to cut public hours of play. In Piedmont the City Council cut hours of pickleball play from 84 to 55.
Meanwhile, Jenkins said that, like many pickleball players, he finds himself driving all over the Bay Area in search of courts where dozens of people are not waiting to play. Overcrowded public courts have 'scattered communities,' with many players joining private clubs like the Bay Club, which has 125 courts across the West Coast, including some at the Bay Club Gateway on the Embarcadero, where abutting condo owners are suing over noise.
In downtown Berkeley, where the city council has to approve the use permit, there may already be some opposition forming. Jack Petranker, director of the Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages which sits across from the garage at 2018 Allston Way, said he saw the notices posted on the property indicating that Neighborhood Pickleball LLC had filed for a use permit to put courts on the roof. He said he had been unfamiliar with the sport but was not thrilled with what he read about it.
'I saw reports that it sounded like gunshots — plastic on plastic,' he said. 'It would be pretty disruptive.'
Mangalam Research Center, which publishes books and holds conferences and lectures, said the courts would be directly across from the managing editor's office as well as from a residential unit where several full-time volunteers are housed.
He reached out to Berkeley City Councilmember Igor Tregub, who said he couldn't take a position because the proposed use permit would come before the council.
'Right now it's early days in the process and I'm looking forward to hearing from the community,' he said. 'My commitment is to be able to have recreational opportunities in the downtown and ensure that the quality of life of the neighbors is also preserved.'
Jenkins said when he started playing four years ago he assumed Bay Area cities would rush to accommodate the burgeoning sport. If that had been the case, he wouldn't feel the need to open his own club.
'It turned out that I was totally wrong,' he said. 'Every city said, 'This is a big pain in the butt. The complaints are a nightmare so we are going to let the private folks come in and build the courts.''