Riverhead closes Calverton pickleball resurfacing project as parks upkeep continues

Riverhead formally closed the books on the pickleball resurfacing project at Veterans Memorial Park in Calverton, ending Capital Project #72509 along with three other park jobs at its June 16 meeting. The Town Board’s action covered closeouts, not new construction, for the Stotzky Memorial Park basketball court, the Veterans Memorial Park parking lot, the Calverton pickleball courts and Bayberry Park improvements.

The pickleball work sits inside a park complex Riverhead recreation materials describe as the town’s newest flagship park. Veterans Memorial Park spans 62 acres and already lists pickleball courts, bocce, the Isaac dog park and the EPCAL bike path among its main amenities. That makes the resurfacing more than routine accounting. For regular players, a fresh playing surface means safer footing, a truer bounce and a longer life for courts that are already heavily used.

The timing matters because Riverhead’s pickleball demand has been building for years. Town officials unveiled new pickleball courts at Veterans Memorial Park on June 6, 2022. By July 22, 2024, RiverheadLOCAL reported that the park had three pickleball courts and about 160 regular weekday-morning players who wanted at least three more. Town officials said at the time that private facilities could help absorb some of that demand.

Riverhead moved to keep the courts in play by creating a new capital project in 2025 and allocating $25,000 in cannabis sales tax revenue for the resurfacing. Officials said the courts had begun to deteriorate before the work was funded, underscoring how quickly a busy public facility can wear down once play becomes constant. The June 16 closeout is the final bookkeeping step in that process, but it also shows the town now treats the courts as a maintenance obligation, not a temporary addition.

The pickleball account was one piece of a broader parks ledger that included Bayberry Park and Stotzky Memorial Park. In 2023, Riverhead engineers identified a $580,000 overhaul of Bayberry’s parking area, a $220,000 resurfacing of Stotzky Park’s main parking lot and a $27,500 fencing replacement at the Stotzky handball court as medium-priority work. In October 2024, officials said Bayberry’s parking lot needed paving and put the cost at $150,000. The EPCAL Alternative Transportation Path, listed at 9.28 miles and linking Veterans Memorial Park with River Road in Calverton, adds another layer to that park network and helps show why Riverhead keeps putting money into upkeep: these facilities now function as part of a larger recreation system that has to stay usable every day.