Boulder’s tennis community is escalating its calls for the city to prioritize building more courts as quickly as possible amid a worsening shortage of courts.

Local tennis and pickleball players have long complained that there aren’t enough places in Boulder for them to play, especially as the sports’ popularity has grown stronger in recent years. But the recent demolition of the Millennium Harvest House Hotel and its 15 tennis courts to make room for student housing has left tennis players with even fewer options.

Tennis aficionados are circulating a Change.org petition calling on Boulder to create more courts and a GoFundMe page asking for donations to support public tennis in the city.

“As the number of tennis players in Boulder grows, Boulder’s public servants have been actively eliminating tennis courts while doing nothing to replace them,” the petition page reads. “Boulder’s tennis community has been pleading with local officials for YEARS to address this problem before it reached this critical point.”

Duke Paluch is the executive director and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center, which had been based at the Millennium hotel courts since the mid-1980s. He said the loss of those courts means Boulder has one less place for players not just to play, but also to socialize and to form friendships that can last a lifetime. It also means one less place to host tournaments and events.

On top of all that, Paluch fears the dwindling stock of courts is making the sport less accessible.

“Tennis is getting to become, in Boulder, a country club sport because people don’t have enough access to it,” he said, adding that the Meadows Tennis Club and the Boulder Country Club have years-long waitlists for people wanting to play.

Rocky Mountain Tennis Center began as a private club, but over the past 10 to 15 years, the organization opened up its courts to the public and started organizing programming for members and non-members alike. Although the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center courts were never city-owned, they were available for the public to use.

Now that the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center has lost its home base, players are using the University of Colorado Boulder South Tennis Complex for now, but the 12 tennis courts there will be torn down when the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation work gets underway, which will likely be next year.

Paluch said the CU South Tennis Complex is busier than it’s ever been. In the mornings — when the weather is cooler — the courts are typically booked, though bookings slow down a little during the heat of the day.

There’s no clear short-term solution for Boulder’s tennis players, and it’s causing frustration across the tennis community. While the city has pitched a plan that aims to add more tennis and pickleball courts in the city over the next 12 years, Paluch said the city’s timeline is too slow to meet the community’s needs.

“The city’s been aware of the shortage … the process has been pretty slow, and now we’re at a crisis. People in Boulder feel like there’s a crisis, especially for indoor court time, but also for outdoor court time,” he said.

And although there’s also been a new proposal to add an indoor-outdoor tennis and pickleball complex between Louisville and Lafayette, Paluch said tennis players in Boulder aren’t thrilled about the prospect of driving out east.

Boulder’s court system plan, which was recently finalized and presented to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board late last month, recommends the city add 22 more dedicated courts each for tennis and pickleball by 2036.

Currently, the city has one dedicated tennis court per 5,400 residents and zero dedicated pickleball courts. The finalized plan recommends that Boulder should eventually have one dedicated tennis court per 2,500 residents and one dedicated pickleball court per 5,000 residents.

The lack of dedicated pickleball courts has been a pain point for local pickleballers. Robert Constable, president of BOCO Pickleball, said the city’s court system plan is a “huge positive step” from the pickleball community’s perspective. Boulder could add as many as four dedicated tennis courts and 16 dedicated pickleball courts at the East Boulder Community Park by next year.

“We would love to have dedicated courts today, (but we’re) dealing with reality. … They have to do successful organization, they have to get funding, they have to do projects and get everything going. It is definitely a huge step in the right direction,” he said.

Originally Published: August 6, 2024 at 4:48 p.m.