Ashland Parks Commission Stalls $1.2 Million Hunter Park Court Upgrade Vote

A $1.2 million upgrade to aging tennis courts at Hunter Park in Ashland, Oregon hit a wall on March 11 when the Ashland Parks & Recreation Commission stalled a planned vote, unable to resolve a heated dispute over whether the project should also accommodate the city's growing pickleball community.

At the center of the standoff is a proposal from the Pickleball Club, which has donated more than $20,000 to pay for re-striping Hunter Park's tennis courts for joint tennis and pickleball use. The commission had been considering a $720,000 state grant, paired with local matching funds, in connection with the broader Hunter Park project. But re-striping tennis courts for dual use is explicitly prohibited under current departmental policy, and that policy has already claimed one casualty: a proposed pickleball tournament at Hunter Park scheduled for this summer has been blocked outright.

Parks Director Rocky Houston advised the commission to pump the brakes on any decision about adding pickleball courts, recommending the issue be folded into the city's Recreation, Open Space, and Senior Services strategic plan, known as the PROS plan, which is set to be undertaken this year. Houston told the commission that "the addition of pickleball lines and portable nets is a lower cost item and not critical to the capital project delivery currently planned. They can be added at any time in the future when and if the Commission makes a policy decision."

City parks and recreation staff have pushed back on the urgency framed by pickleball advocates. A staff study concluded that Ashland is "providing a higher level of service than comparable communities," and staffers maintain that "the department is meeting the recreational needs of pickleball users." The city currently operates eight pickleball courts at Lithia Park.

Ronald D. Owen, chair of the Pickleball Club, sees the situation differently. Owen told The Chronicle that the commission should "hear from the people using the Lithia Park courts to learn about the actual overcrowding that occurs at different times, dates and seasons." The gap between the staff's capacity assessment and the on-court reality described by players sits at the heart of why this vote stalled.

With the PROS strategic plan process ahead and no rescheduled vote date confirmed, the Pickleball Club's $20,000-plus donation sits earmarked for re-striping work that cannot legally proceed until the commission changes its own policy.