CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Centennial city council members have a gathered a lot of information as they mull over potential regulations for new pickleball courts.
On Tuesday night, a city planner presented highlights from a 77-page sound study commissioned by the city from an acoustical consultant named Lance Willis. Willis said he couldn’t interview with 9NEWS because of his work with the city.
The sound study found any courts within 350 feet of homes would likely need some sort of mitigation, and courts within 500 to 600 feet may require a review by an acoustical engineer. Courts within 150 feet of homes would need extensive noise abatement to avoid complaints, and courts within 100 feet of homes aren’t recommended.
“The nice thing to do is to reduce the sound at the point where the ball hits the paddle,” said Bob Unetich, a retired mechanical engineer who now consults with communities on best practices for mitigating pickleball noise. “And you can do that – especially in private communities. It’s really difficult to do that in a public park where anyone cand drive up in a car with paddles and balls they just purchased.”
Unetich recommends communities find their baseline ambient noise level – the natural background sound level which can vary from place to place.
“If you’re in an urban area… and you hear some traffic all the time…that’s much different than when you’re out in the woods,” he said. “In many cases … putting up some sort of barrier…either reflecting or absorbing or some sort of combination of things is sufficient to get the sound level down to at least the background noise level.”
Unetich, a pickleball player who also serves as a referee, said he sees both sides of the issue. The game is growing so people want more places to play, but the sound can be annoying because of its pitch.
“I’m annoyed by noises myself,” he said. “When I hear a pickleball sound I think of trying to put up with that for 10 to 12 hours a day… I don’t think I could put up with it.”
“If you have homes within a couple hundred feet, you need to do something about that, Unetich said. "You need to have some sort of mitigation…whatever that is. Part of that is limiting the hours of play.”
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