Joanne Petz watches as Max Reamer leaps to make a hit at the Baldwin Park pickleball courts on Tuesday.
(Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)
SARANAC LAKE — The future of the pickleball and tennis courts at Baldwin Park is continuing to be volleyed back-and-forth amongst the mayor and village board as pickleballers fight for the sport they love.
The village board made a seemingly final decision to move forward with plans to redesign the park without the courts in a 4-1 vote last month. But Mayor Jimmy Williams, who was the only dissenting vote, is renewing his call to slow down the process after the board was presented with 500 signatures pickleballers gathered on a petition asking the village to keep the courts on Monday.
Trustee Rich Shapiro questioned how many of these signatures were from residents. The list includes addresses from the villages and towns surrounding Saranac Lake. Williams said this is a significant portion of the community. Saranac Lake, the largest population center in this area, has around under 5,000 residents.
This courts issue keeps getting hit back and forth. The village’s initial plan removed the tennis and pickleball courts, but after more public discussion last summer, one court was added back into the plan. Last month, that plan changed to remove all the courts again. Now Williams is asking the board to reconsider.
He said he doesn’t want to rush this, since there are a lot of people asking them to reconsider removing the courts from the resdesign plans. He said he may bring a resolution to pause it to next board meeting. But this would need board action and the rest of the board is not keen on changing course.
They feel it is a decided issue; he does not.
Trustees said they worried the courts would endanger the village’s chances of getting a grant for the park redesign.
Last year, the village submitted a grant application to the state for a state Consolidated Funding Application grant to turn the park into a walking and picnic area with waterfront access.
This would have maintained one of the two courts, but it was not funded because the proposal did not score high enough. The reason for its scoring was that the application did not show “clear benefits for sustainability, natural resource protection/restoration and resiliency.” That could be related to the courts.
Pickleball players describe pickleball as a positive force in their life, improving them physically, mentally and socially. They say pickleball adds value for the players and the community.
They feel sad to see any of the village’s few courts go away, but pickleballers aren’t giving up.
Quite a few showed up to a village meeting on Monday.
Betsy Hall, a Presbyterian minister and pickleballer, delivered her “sermon” to cheers from the faithful. She said the Baldwin Park courts get more use now than they did a few years ago.
Denise Figueroa, a neighbor of the park, said it gets used “night and day.”
Bill Decker said he won’t go to Baldwin Park for a pavilion, but he will for pickleball.
Hall said replacing the courts with grass would attract geese. She finds it hard to believe this would endanger the grant and asked the village to revise its grant application based on constituent response.
Hall said other parks have waterfront access, walkways, benches and tables. Baldwin Park is one of the only places to have pickleball courts, and one of the only walkable locations for the courts.
“These people are all driving,” Shapiro said of the pickleballers later in the meeting.
Trustees felt pickleball courts could be built in other places in the village that aren’t on the shore of Lake Flower.
“I can sympathize with the pickleball players, but I have to wonder how many of them have access to waterfront elsewhere? There’s a lot of people in the community who don’t,” Trustee Kelly Brunette said. “For people who don’t own lakefront property, having access to waterfront is important.”
Williams has tried to slow down the decision on the courts before.
“I got steamrolled,” Williams said.
He washed his hands of the decision on Monday and put it on the rest of the board.
“Everybody sitting here tonight, if we go forward with this, should be willing to say publicly that they don’t care about hundreds of constituents who want to keep courts,” Williams said.
The trustees took issue with that.
“I disagree with your description of our feelings. We do care about those people,” Shapiro said.
“They’re not the people from Saranac Lake,” Trustee Tom Catillaz said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the pickleball courts were full with the thwack of paddles on whiffle balls. Around a dozen players were rotating in and out on the two courts. A local group who talk on an app went down to play and tourists from Maryland and Michigan who brought their paddles with them joined in.
The future of the courts was on all of their minds as they wound up for serves and dove to make saves.
