South Burlington scales back pickleball courts after years of noise complaints

South Burlington is backing away from part of its pickleball buildout at Szymanski Park, a move that leaves local players with a smaller footprint after the city’s only public courts became a neighborhood flashpoint. The park still advertises pickleball hours from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. daily, but the scale-back shows how quickly access can shrink when court noise collides with homes close by.

The dispute was still active enough to land on the South Burlington City Council agenda for May 4, 2026, under a request to discuss pickleball at the park. Szymanski Park sits at 33 Andrews Ave. and spans 20 acres, but its role in the city’s sports scene has grown far larger than the site itself since tennis courts there were converted into four pickleball courts about two years before July 2024.

That conversion brought the sport to a new audience and also brought a steady drumbeat of complaints. Jovana Guarino, who lives nearby, said in July 2024 that the sound was “unbearable” from about 100 feet away. She also said busy days were spilling onto Andrews Ave., with cars lining the road and parking overflow adding a traffic problem to the noise issue. By then, Guarino had started a petition with about 60 signatures, and a later follow-up said she had lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and still heard the sound as constant.

City leaders were already weighing compromises. Tim Barritt, the council chair, said in 2024 that Szymanski Park was the only public pickleball court in South Burlington, which made the fight more than a simple neighborhood dispute. Staff floated changes to park hours, earlier shutoffs for the lights, and soundproofing matting, all signs that the city was looking for a way to preserve play without keeping the pressure on nearby homes.

The South Burlington fight tracks a broader tension in amateur pickleball: the game is exploding, but its sharp, repetitive sound can trigger resistance when courts sit close to residential streets. A 2024 observational study in Richmond found average sound levels of 69.7 dBA courtside and peak levels up to 115.6 dBC, while a noise-control paper argued pickleball can be treated as an impulsive sound source that may shift compliance calculations by as much as 7 dB if it is classified as highly impulsive.

For South Burlington players, the immediate result is not just a planning fight on paper. It is a reminder that every added court can come with a tradeoff, and that in dense neighborhoods the real competition is often between more play and more peace.