Decatur getting new blue look on tennis courts, outdoor pickleball courts
Jun. 22—Most of Decatur's public tennis courts will get a new look with U.S. Open Blue playing surfaces, and several of them will be converted into outdoor pickleball courts through a city project that began this week. The first converted courts could be ready late next month.
Aaron Lang, maintenance supervisor at Decatur Parks & Recreation, said the project was bid out to Birmingham-based Lower Bros. Tennis Courts at $310,000 to resurface courts at eight sites.
As part of the project, courts at two of the sites will be converted into seven pickleball courts, according to Dan Lucas, city tennis director. He said the resurfacing will make the courts' playing surfaces the U.S. Open's trademark blue, and the areas surrounding the courts will be U.S. Open Green.
"It's going to be the same colors as center court at the U.S. Open," Lucas said. "Everybody's going to these colors now."
Owen Lower and Jeff Willings from Lower Bros. were at the four Delano Park tennis courts on Tuesday and had finished resurfacing the four court pads with a coating of U.S. Open Blue acrylic paint. The court pads had previously been dark green. Willings and Lower started repainting the light green areas between courts and will also add white boundary lines.
"It had a lot of cracks in it so we've repaired all the cracks and now we're just resurfacing," Lower said. "It's just a normal crack-repair resurface."
Willings said before painting, they laid a fiberglass membrane over the cracks on the tennis court.
"We're done with painting the blue, now we're putting green on the outside," Willings said.
Lower and Willings said they will finish resurfacing the Delano Park tennis courts this week and will start work on the courts at the Jimmy Johns Tennis Complex at Point Mallard next week. They will also resurface courts at Pop Oliver Park, Austin Junior High, Carrie Mathews Recreation Center, Julian Harris Elementary, Walter Jackson Elementary and Flint City Park.
The three tennis courts at Austin Junior High School will be converted into six pickleball courts during the resurfacing, according to Lucas. The tennis court at Pop Oliver Park will become one pickleball court. Lucas said the city had hoped to create two pickleball courts at Pop Oliver, but its tennis court is smaller than regulation and there was room for only one pickleball court.
Lang said the first resurfaced outdoor pickleball court could be ready in late July.
When Lower Bros. is finished, the city will have 30 resurfaced tennis hardcourts and seven pickleball courts with new surfaces. Lucas said the tennis courts at Wilson Morgan Park are not being resurfaced because they could be removed for the planned recreation center at that park.
The two outdoor tennis courts in the park at Julian Harris Elementary were previously marked for dual tennis/pickleball play and have portable pickleball nets. Lucas said it will be up to the city whether those courts are marked for pickleball again after resurfacing.
Lang said it will take a week to complete work on each tennis court site.
Invented in 1965, pickleball is a cross between tennis, Ping-Pong and badminton, played with a paddle and a perforated plastic ball. Pickleball uses a smaller court and lower net than tennis, but courts can be designed to serve both sports with a portable pickleball net.
— wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438.
