Mountain View residents don’t want pickleball in Cuesta Park and Annex

On a recent Saturday afternoon at Rengstorff Park, the sound of paddles hitting pickleballs reverberated on the courts as players teased each other over missed shots while others waited for their turn to join a game.

The sight is not an uncommon one, according to Cliff Chambers, Mountain View Pickleball Club board president.

“The courts are always full,” he said, adding the sport’s popularity has grown rapidly in the past decade but Mountain View has not kept up with the demand.

Currently, there are three dedicated pickleball courts at Rengstorff Park and six additional courts shared with tennis players. The outdoor offerings could expand in the near future though as the city is exploring options to build more pickleball courts, possibly at Cuesta Park or Cuesta Annex, a 12.5-acre plot of undeveloped open space next to the park.

The proposition has alarmed a group of Mountain View residents who say they support adding more courts in the city — just not at the expense of paving over existing green and open spaces to do it.

Opposition to the plan has solidified in recent weeks with an online campaign urging the city to consider alternative locations for pickleball courts, like at a site on San Rafael Avenue that the city recently purchased or at one of Shoreline Park’s parking lots.

The campaign, dubbed “Save Cuesta Park and Annex,” describes the park and adjacent annex as some of the few natural areas left in the city. Opponents of placing pickleball courts on the annex also point out that there has been a long history of campaigns to protect the annex from the encroachment of development projects.

“Once it’s paved over, it can’t come back,” said Leslie Friedman, a Mountain View resident who often visits Cuesta Park. “It’s peaceful and has a lot of trees and walking trails.”

Last year, city staff selected Cuesta Park as one of the most suitable sites for a pickleball facility after looking at more than 60 other locations. The size of the park, its existing infrastructure and its distance from neighboring homes made it a good candidate, according to a report presented to the Parks and Recreation Commission.

But the plan was controversial. To make room for 10 pickleball courts, the city proposed to take over the “dog bowl,” a grassy area of Cuesta Park that is used for off-leash dogs.

The idea was that by placing the pickleball courts at the dog bowl, they would be near the existing tennis courts at Cuesta Park. However, not everyone favored that plan.

“It cannibalized a lot of green space,” including the dog park, said Mike Rodgers, former board president of the Mountain View Tennis Club.

The plan also was expensive, with a projected cost of $5 million, more than what is typical for standard pickleball facilities, according to Chambers.

The city has attributed the high cost to the grading work needed to level the dog bowl. It also factored in the cost of replacing an existing retaining wall and relocating the off-leash dog area to another part of the park, according to a June city memo.

Rodgers is in full support of the city building pickleball courts, which would help ease demand for playing time on the Rengstorff tennis courts. Rodgers stressed that both pickleball and tennis players have been waiting years for the city to build more courts. But he favors putting the courts on the annex, rather than the park.

Rodgers proposed a potential design to the City Council in April, which would place 16 pickleball courts next to the existing tennis courts. According to Rodgers, his plan would not take up a large footprint of open space, requiring only a quarter acre of the annex.