Lisa Reisman file photo
Pickleball played at the Floyd Little Athletic Center in April ...
BZA photo
... and next at an indoor trendy paddle sport building, coming to this parking lot?
Indoor pickleball instead of surface-lot parking could be coming to a busy Westville Village intersection, as the owner of a Valley Street stretch of asphalt has proposed constructing a new two-story “gym and spa” dedicated to the trendy tennis-adjacent sport.
Those plans were detailed Tuesday night during the latest regular monthly meeting of the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), which was held online via Zoom.
Local attorney Ben Trachten presented to the commissioners an application for a suite of zoning relief at 1 Valley St. at the intersection of Blake near Whalley for a project that will ultimately see a new two-story, indoor pickleball “recreation facility.”
The requested relief included variances to permit a rear yard of 6.4 feet where 16.66 feet is required and to permit a side yard of 6.4 feet where 12.5 feet is required, as well as special exceptions to allow a “recreation facility (pickleball)” in the BA zone and to permit 0 loading spaces where one loading space is required.
The owner of the property is 1 Valley Street LLC, a holding company controlled by Milford’s Alyssa Blume. The zoning-relief applicant is Pickleville CT LLC, a holding company controlled by Harrison Blume.
The zoning board referred the requested relief to the City Plan Commission for further review, and plans to take the application up for a final vote at its next monthly meeting. Trachten made clear that, even if the BZA grants the requested zoning relief, the proposed development will still have to undergo a full site plan review before the City Plan Commission before it can be built.
Ben Trachten at Tuesday’s zoning board meeting.
The application seeks to “bring pickleball to Westville Village at an existing surface parking lot” at Blake and Valley, Trachten said on Tuesday night.
The site is across the street from the still-under-construction 500 Blake St. development, and is adjacent to a municipal parking lot and the long-vacant Church of Scientology-owned former Hallock’s building. It will require “a tremendous amount of site work to make it work,” particularly the installation of “retaining walls and other structures to keep the pickleball facility safe.”
“Pickleball is a fast-growing sport,” Trachten continued, about the sport that sits somewhere between tennis and ping pong.
There are outdoor courts down the road in Edgewood Park that are “routinely unavailable because there’s strong competition to utilize them.” Being outdoors, those existing courts will also likely be difficult to use in the cold-weather months.
“It’s basically just a big, open, two-floor warehouse building that can be erected very quickly to jump on the trend of pickleball for decades to come,” the local land-use attorney continued. “If that should fail, it’s the kind of flexible space that can serve many other purposes in Westville Village” and be “adaptively reused in the future.”
Adam Waters.
BZA Commissioner Adam Waters asked Trachten about an initial sketch of the proposed pickleball facility that refers to it as a “pickleball gym and spa.”
“What uses are intended in the facility?” he asked.
Trachten said that the developer has had “some discussions of going slightly beyond pickleball,” but, he said, the “recreational facility [will be] consistent with pickleball health and wellness.” He pointed out that Section 42, Table 3 of the city’s zoning code indicates what recreational facility exactly would be allowed at such a site.
“Primarily, it would be a pickleball facility with a warmup area somewhere,” he said. “The developer wanted some flexibility in terms of the language,” thus the “gym and spa” description on the sketch.
Lizzy Donius.
During the public hearing portion of the meeting, Westville Village Renaissance Alliance Executive Director Lizzy Donius threw her support behind the pickleball plan. “I didn’t think anybody could do anything with this particular parcel of land,” she said. “We are excited that someone has come up with an idea. Hopefully pickleball will bring some people to come up and buy rackets and drink coffee and hang out in Westville.”
Two Harrison Street neighbors, meanwhile, Zoomed in to raise concerns about what the pickleball plan might mean for noise and traffic in the area.
“There happens to be a problem of noise pollution with pickleball,” John Anderson said. “Pickleball is very loud. … I don’t want to hear a constant pop pop pop. Some people equate it to a shooting range.”
He said that noise will likely be less of a problem with this plan because it is a building with indoor, as opposed to outdoor, courts. “If it’s quiet, then that’s a good thing.”
As for traffic, he said, “the congestion of traffic keeps increasing in Westville.” The corner of Blake and Valley is “crazy” as it is today. The pickleball building plus the under-construction apartments across the street will likely only increase traffic, and make that an even busier and more dangerous car-centric stretch.
Maz Burbank agreed. “While I would love to have pickleball in the area … I have some concerns about what’s happening with the traffic at the corners of Whalley, Blake, and Valley Street,” she said. “It’s backing up tremendously over the past couple of years.”
“If they can figure out the traffic,” she concluded, “then I’ll be all in favor.”
Trachten replied that, indeed, noise shouldn’t be an issue given that the courts will be indoors. “We’re not going to have those concerns.”
There appear to be “traffic signal improvements” already underway on that stretch of Blake and Whalley, he added. Any traffic impact posed by the new pickleball building will also have to be worked out through the site plan review process before the City Plan Commission. Those traffic concerns “will be addressed in one form or fashion through site plan” and ongoing work to the road.
BZA Chair Melendez.
With that, BZA Chair Mildred Melendez said that the zoning-relief request is now heading to the City Plan Commission for review and an advisory vote before heading back to the zoning board for deliberations and a final vote.
Most folks are familiar with the term NIMBY. Less well known is its cousin, BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything). The Blake/Whalley/Valley intersections really need improvements, but this facility is not going to make a significant difference in traffic levels. FWIW, I have never played pickleball.