At the October 26 Sun City Board meeting, the board received the report from the Ad Hoc committee that was established last June to study the usage of the tennis and pickleball courts. Board members Ryden, Lambert and Berendt were joined by staff members Loughran and OâToole on the committee. The committee was tasked with exploring the Pickleball Charter Clubâs request for more courts.
Data from both Charter Clubs had been submitted and studied in the past. The analysis of that data resulted in questions of its accuracy due to the means used to collect the information.
The Board decided at the May 25 meeting to spend $9,000 for cameras to be installed at the Tall Oaks courts to capture actual court usage. It was also announced that the data would be analyzed by the Ad Hoc committee in October.
Each member of the Ad Hoc committee participated in the presentation of the data which included information from each gameâs national headquarters and from other active adult communities located in various parts of the country.
More than 4,200 data points were collected and studied. The data points were described as âfeet on the courts.â The hours included in the study were from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. Three distinct time periods were considered. The âclub timesâ were from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 4-9 p.m. The 12-4 p.m. was considered community time where any resident could use any court without the need of being a member of either club.
The collected data clearly showed that the morning hours were the preferred times by both clubs. The four-hour open public period had the least amount of usage and the evening âclub timesâ were sparsely used.
The committee commented that scheduling by the clubs contributed to the imbalance of the âclub timesâ use and some modifications to the club schedule of activities would eliminate problems reported by members on the lack of available court time to fit their individual schedules.
The summary of the presentation included the scheduling of a meeting of the Ad Hoc committee with the two charter clubsâ Executive Committees in early November. The full Sun City Board would then vote on a decision at the December 6 board meeting.
Ultimately, the decision would be to either build new courts or reallocate courts or to do nothing.
