What happens when you combine nearly 200 pickleball players with only two city-owned pickleball courts?

Lines.

Drive by the Donner Park pickleball courts between 4 p.m. and dark on any given night and that’s what you’ll find — long lines of eager players waiting for their turn to play one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States.

“Pickleball is huge,” said Nikki Murphy, director of sports programs for Columbus Parks and Recreation. “It has boomed very quickly, becoming one of the country’s fastest growing sports, and we recognize that.”

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Columbus Parks and Recreation owns the two courts at Donner Park, 1900 Lafayette Ave., but since installing them in 2016, the department soon found it wasn’t enough.

Pickleball has had a 650 percent increase in numbers over the past six years, according to the USA Pickleball Association.

“In 2017, a massive amount of people wanted to play,” Murphy said. “The sport grew overnight.”

Norris and Mary Moore are credited with bringing the sport to Columbus from Florida, and it’s been a “hit” ever since.

So, what is pickleball?

Imagine if tennis, racquetball and ping pong all combined to become one sport. Players use special paddles and a wiffle ball, and games take place on tennis courts with specific pickleball lines. Nets and court sizes are smaller than their tennis counterparts, and the most common game is doubles, although singles is also an option.

Because no more than four people can be on a court at once, that leaves room for only eight people to play on Columbus’ two courts at a time.

Asking for more courts

In 2017, Murphy said Norris and Mary Moore approached the parks department about the possibility of expanding the courts to keep up with the demand for court time.

The estimated cost for three additional courts at Donner Park plus the transformation of the two existing courts into a tournament-capable set of courts is about $60,000 to $70,000, Murphy said.

Columbus Parks and Recreation submitted its prioritized list to the Columbus City Council last year with pickleball courts on the list of requests. Murphy said funding for the courts just missed the council’s cut off for dollars, just underneath other projects on the list such as park expansions and improvements.

The Columbus Pickleball Club formed a fundraising committee last year and created a campaign to raise its own money for additional courts. In 2018, the club kicked off its efforts with its inaugural Discover Columbus Pickleball Tournament, a three-day, non-sanctioned tournament open to any and all pickleball players across the country.

Charlie Day of Columbus said he thought hosting an outdoor tournament would be the perfect way to raise money for the cost of the new courts. After Day competed in a pickleball tournament in 2017, he approached the tournament director about helping Columbus host its own competition.

Day said 119 people between ages 8 and 89 years old participated in Columbus’ first-ever pickleball tournament last September, including participants from eight states outside Indiana. The club raised about $11,300 from the tournament in 2018.

To date, the Columbus Pickleball Club has raised $28,260.19 toward the new court expansion — just over $20,000 short of its $50,000 goal. Murphy said the parks department and the club agreed to split the cost of the new courts and improve by 50 percent if Columbus City Council approves its $30,000 capital project request for the sport this fall.

Columbus Pickleball Club President Cindy Massey said while eight people were playing on the courts, another 19 people were waiting in line one day recently.

“That’s not every day, but that is frequently,” Massey said. “The need for more courts is huge. Most cities and towns with our type of funding available have 10 or 12 courts easily. We don’t want it to die out if people can’t play.”

Day is currently working on taping out pickleball lines on the tennis courts at W.D. Richards Elementary School to give people more options to play pickleball beyond Donner Park. The city owns the two tennis court surfaces at Richards, which Murphy said are in disrepair with wide and deep cracks that make it difficult to play tennis.

The city also painted pickleball lines on the handball court at Harrison Ridge Park.

Interest continues to grow

Massey said the club donates its time and skills to the parks department to promote and teach pickleball at Donner Park, Foundation for Youth and Tipton Lakes, where pickleball court lines have been painted. The $45 clinics are often packed with people of all ages.

Murphy said the parks department takes a small percentage of the money collected from clinics and donates the rest to the the club’s fundraising budget line.

About 25 members of the Columbus club attended the July 11 public meeting at FairOaks Mall to express interest in adding indoor pickleball courts to the nearly vacant property when the mall is redeveloped into a community wellness, recreation and sports center.

The club wasn’t shy about offering input for what they’d like to see in the new development, wearing their pickleball T-shirts and writing their interest of new courts on color-coded sticky notes at the meeting’s interactive stations.

“It’s one thing if you ask (the parks department) for stuff on the side or in emails, but when we give you the opportunity to have a voice, we want you to use it,” Murphy said. “Pickleball never ever, ever stands down when there’s an opportunity to have a voice, and I think that’s incredible. They’ve done their due diligence, they’ve done their civic duty and have shown up and had a voice.”

Murphy said the parks department will know this fall if city council members will approve the department’s final capital dollars request for the new courts.

“We don’t have a dedicated place,” Massey said. “Columbus Parks and Recreation has bent over backwards, but their hands are tied. They have budgets and constraints. There’s politics involved and a lot that they have to do to upkeep things that are already built, and we understand that. We’re just keeping it forward and hoping we can get on that list.”

If new pickleball courts are added to the existing courts at Donner Park, they will be named after Norris and Mary Moore. Norris Moore lost his battle to cancer on May 30. He was survived by by his wife Mary.

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Columbus Parks and Recreation Department has two pickleball courts, located at Donner Park on Sycamore and 17th Street.

The pickleball courts are open year-round, weather-permitting. For a list of recreational and competitive play times, visit columbusparksandrec.com/activities-and-programs/sports/pickleball.

Pickleball lines have also been added to the gymnasium floor at Foundation for Youth, the handball court at Harrison Ridge Park and the tennis courts at W.D. Richards Elementary School.

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Pickleball is a paddle sport created for all ages and skill levels.

Players use special paddles and a wiffle ball, and games take place on tennis courts with specific pickleball lines. Nets and court sizes are smaller than their tennis counterparts, and the most common game is doubles, although singles is also an option.

The object of a pickleball match is to win the game by scoring more points than your opponent.

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Accounts of how the name originated for pickleball differ.

"According to co-creator Joel Pritchard’s wife, she started calling the game ‘pickleball’ because ‘the combination of different sports reminded me of the pickle boat in crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats.’

However, according to co-creater Barney McCallum, the game was officially named after the Pritchards’ dog Pickles who would chase the ball and run off with it.

Others claim both accounts may actually be true. In the early years, no official name was assigned to the game. However a year or two after the game was invented, the Pritchards purchased a cocker spaniel and named it Pickles. As the game progressed, an official name was needed and ‘pickleball’ was it."

Source: USA Pickleball Association

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Columbus Parks and Recreation Board members will have a special meeting today to consider buying an environmentally-contaminated industrial building on Jackson Street which is owned by Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop’s aunt.

The board will convene for a special meeting at 2 p.m. today at Columbus City Hall’s council chambers to consider the purchase agreement with Norma Lienhoop, an agreement which has been in negotiations since last year.

Columbus Parks and Recreation Department has been hoping to buy the vacant former Machinery Moving building at 1360 Jackson St. for months. Mayor Jim Lienhoop has recused himself from all negotiations or decisions about the building and has repeatedly referred all questions about the transaction to parks officials handling the negotiations.

Parks board members said in March they would not purchase the property unless environmental issues from underground storage tanks were cleaned up without using any local tax dollars. The contamination on the property, revealed in two environmental evaluations from an outside contractor, includes benzene and other petroleum-related chemicals that were found in soil and groundwater on the property.

The city began searching for grants to pay for the chemical contamination cleanup this spring, parks officials said in March. A state grant from Indiana Brownfields, a statewide program that assists in the redevelopment of brownfield properties, agreed to pay for remediation of the site, but only if the property is in the city’s ownership — not owned by a private citizen such as Norma Lienhoop.

Columbus Parks Director Mark Jones said the city is purchasing the property on Indiana Brownfield’s timeline to ensure no local tax money is used to pay for any remediation. Indiana Brownfields gave the city a July deadline to complete the purchase of the Norma Lienhoop property.

Parks officials and Norma Lienhoop reached a purchase agreement price of $205,000 for the property after a final appraisal and environmental study were completed, according to the purchase documents provided to parks board members. The previous asking price would have cost the city $250,000 in city capital funds and one $50,000 payment from its cash reserve.

The price was reduced because of the newly-determined cleanup efforts, meaning the current property owner will get less money for the property because of the necessary remediation, said Mary Ferdon, executive director of administration and community development for the city.

If the parks board agrees to make the purchase today during the special meeting, the city will make payments in the amount of $34,166.67 for six years to pay for it.

Jones said the parks department wants to use the property as a storage facility because of its proximity to downtown Columbus and other city buildings. It would be used to store mowers and other equipment closer to park property around the downtown area.

Soil borings at the property of the former Machinery Moving Inc. property indicated the chemical contamination may have come from underground storage tanks. The property had three underground fuel storage tanks installed between 1972 and 1976. While state records indicate those tanks were removed in 1989, Jones said engineers could find no local documentation that confirmed their removal.

In an executive summary provided by Indianapolis-based Ark Engineering Service in Phase I and Phase II environmental reports, company officials said they did six soil borings to collect soil and groundwater samples. The company also collected wipe samples within the interior of the buildings to “evaluate for the presence and/or absence of chemical impacts to building surfaces associated with historic site maintenance and storage operations.”

Machinery Moving Inc., an industrial rigging facility, set up small and large heavy machinery at off-site factories and manufacturing facilities. Operations included transportation and storage of various types of machinery until early 2018, according to Ark.

The former Machinery Moving Inc. site consists of two, single-story vacant office and warehouse buildings, with an asphalt and gravel parking lot and landscaping on three parcels of land, taking up just over 2 acres.

Ark reported that the soil showed chemical impacts exceeding the Indiana Department of Environmental Management Remediation Closure Guide, Residential Migration to Groundwater Screening Levels and Residential Direct Contact Screening Levels for several petroleum hydrocarbon constituents. These included benzene, ethylbenzene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, xylenes, 1-methylnaphthalene, 2-methylnaphthalene and naphthalene.

Petroleum hydrocarbon substances in the form of benzene, 1-methylnaphthalene, 2-methylnaphthalene and naphthalene were found in groundwater in amounts that exceeded IDEM’s Residential Screening Levels, the report stated. Benzene was also found exceeding IDEM Residential Vapor Exposure Screening Levels, the report stated.

The wipe samples did not reveal chemical contamination that exceeded applicable IDEM screening parameters, the company said.

Ark officials said the soil contamination was found in two soil borings, and the groundwater contamination in one soil boring in the presumed area where the company may have had the underground storage tanks, the document states.

“Based on the results of this limited investigation, both soil and groundwater impacts do not appear to be widespread and appear to be limited to the area of the historic USTs, (underground storage tanks),” the report states.

“Although this area of impact is not widespread, additional investigation will be necessary to fully characterize the nature and horizontal extent” of the contamination, the report states.

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The vacant former machinery moving building at 1360 Jackson St. is owned by Norma Lienhoop, aunt of Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop.

Soil borings at the property of the former Machinery Moving Inc. indicated the chemical contamination may have come from underground storage tanks. The property had three underground fuel storage tanks installed between 1972 and 1976. While state records indicate those tanks were removed in 1989, Jones said engineers could find no local documentation that confirmed their removal from the property.

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What: Columbus Parks and Recreation Board special meeting

When: 2 p.m. today

Where: Columbus City Hall, 123 Washington St., in the city council chambers

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