Asheville weighs Aston Park, Roger Farmer Park for first public pickleball complex

The clock is now on for Asheville’s first public pickleball complex: residents, park users and players will weigh Aston Park against Roger Farmer Park from April 27 through May 11, and the site choice will decide where 8 to 10 dedicated courts land, along with parking, restrooms, lights and the traffic that comes with them.

City officials picked the two parks after professional site analyses by Surface 678 landscape architects. They are not talking about striping a few tennis lines and calling it a day. Asheville Parks & Recreation wants a dedicated facility, and the city says the project is meant to stretch voter-approved bond dollars farther without buying new land. The complex is being funded through the city’s 2024 general obligation bonds, a package voters approved on Nov. 5, 2024 that totaled $80 million, with $20 million set aside for parks and recreation.

That money matters because Asheville has spent years catching up to the sport. The city says its first indoor pickleball courts opened at Stephens-Lee Community Center in 2012 and Linwood Crump Shiloh Community Center in 2014, while its first outdoor public courts date to 2016. By 2022, Asheville had 12 outdoor courts and six indoor courts, but none had permanent pickleball nets. That is the kind of patchwork setup that keeps a growing pickleball scene dependent on shared use and short-term fixes. Asheville’s parks department says the new complex is being driven by “tremendous local growth,” and the city’s plan puts it in Phase 1 of Recreate Asheville, the 10-year parks and recreation roadmap adopted on Aug. 27, 2024.

The public-input process will include drop-in sessions at Roger Farmer Park, Aston Park and Asheville Sports Club, plus an online survey. One of the sessions will include free open-play pickleball, a smart move because it lets nonplayers see how much space, noise and movement the sport actually brings to a public park. The city also says it wants feedback from both picklers and non-picklers to minimize impacts and maximize benefits, which is the right way to handle a project that could reshape daily park use for nearby neighborhoods.

Roger Farmer Park already has ballfields, a multi-sport court, a multi-use field, off-street parking, a picnic shelter and restrooms, and the site was first developed by the YMCA of Western North Carolina. That built-in recreation footprint could make it an easier fit, but it also raises the stakes for how much room pickleball would take from other uses. Asheville says the final site will be chosen by the end of summer, and for the first time, the city’s pickleball boom is moving from court scraps to a real public buildout.