Pickleball at the pyramid? Pawtucket hits the brakes on proposal for Apex building

A plan to put pickleball courts beneath the pointy roof of Pawtucket's pyramid-shaped Apex building shows the popularity of the trendy paddle sport may yet to have peaked.

But Pawtucket officials are not ready to turn the property they spent $17.7 million to acquire two years ago over to picklers, as the game's most fanatic players are known. At least not yet.

The Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency, which owns the Apex property, on Tuesday turned down the proposal from a local businessman to build nine pickleball courts beneath its ziggurat-shaped roof.

Asbestos will keep picklers out of the Apex building - for now

Unlike some communities worried about pickleball's noise or the colonization of spaces formerly used for tennis and basketball, Pawtucket's concern is legal and financial.

There may be asbestos in the building, Pawtucket Planning Director Bianca Policastro told the Redevelopment Agency board, and to open the facility to the public for pickleball would require the agency to hire a structural engineer to guarantee its safety.

Board members advised the man behind the pickleball proposal, Christopher O'Neill, to check back in next year after more engineering and planning work on the building had been done.

Why the Apex building?

O'Neill said he has been scouring commercial real estate from "Warwick to Sharon, Massachusetts" in search of an available site with enough space and high ceilings at the right price to build indoor pickleball courts.

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When none had what he was looking for, he turned to the Apex building, a long-underutilized, high-visibility property that the city bought with hopes of developing into a commercial and recreational gateway to downtown.

"This is pickleball for everybody as far as I'm concerned.," O'Neill told the PRA board Tuesday. "We're going to cater to the beginners all the way to the pros and I believe the format that I've put out here is going to make this pickleball facility the most affordable indoor facility in the northeast."

What would indoor pickleball have looked like?

O'Neill's "Pickleball Center" would have included nine courts, two smaller practice courts, locker rooms, a lounge and "multipurpose meeting room for outside events," according to a prospectus given to the city.

"Our plan is to have a large enough meeting room so that corporations can actually come in, do corporate business, bring in their sales groups, bring in their company to work for four hours in the morning in the meeting room ... and then play pickleball in the afternoon," he said.

O'Neill was offering to pay $115,000 per year to rent 38,000 square feet in the roughly 100,000 square-foot Apex building. He said he would need 100 of the 400 parking spaces at the site.

Recognizing that the city might want to eventually tear the whole building down, he was seeking a 10-year lease, but with an option for the city to terminate at the four or five year mark.

As he sees it, given the market and pace of the city's redevelopment process, it will take at least that long for any longer-term project to get off the ground.

"I don't want to tie the city's hands with being able to bring in a developer for that property and develop that property to whatever it may be, whether it's condos, apartments, retail space," O'Neill said. "But I also believe it's going to take quite a few years for that to happen and that's why I asked for the minimum of five years in the 10 year lease. I'm willing to step out of the way and let progress continue in our city if we are able to find a developer in the next four or five years."

What is in the Apex building now?

Despite concerns about its condition, the Apex building, which hosted the state Division of Motor Vehicles for a time after heyday as a department store was already past, does have three current tenants: The Elisha Project, Walco Electric and what is left of the Apex company, according to Grace Voll, spokeswoman for Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien. (Apex is leaving by the end of the year, she said.)

O'Neil said he would invest $500,000 to build the Pickleball Center, but Policastro told the PRA Board that the plan could still come with costs to the city.

"If I was to work with you to move this forward, I would have to have my own external engineer and structural analysis," Policastro said. "If not, I think we'd be opening ourselves up for risk ... So that's my concern right now: what happens if I start doing my due diligence, I start spending a hundred thousand and then I keep on uncovering stuff?"

She added that the city is working on a traffic and parking analysis connected to the Tidewater soccer stadium on the other side of Interstate 95 and wouldn't want to commit parking spaces to a pickleball facility before that's done.

O'Neill met with Grebien over the summer about leasing the Apex building, but didn't get a rousing endorsement for putting pickleball there.

"The mayor welcomes any re-development ideas for the Apex site. However, he also understands and respects the concerns raised by both Director Policastro and the PRA Board," Voll said when asked where Grebien stood on the proposal. "The administration would still like to work with Mr. O'Neill to find an alternative location in Pawtucket for his pickleball court proposal."

The city acquired the Apex properties after years of negotiations and legal wrangling with former owner Andrew Gates.

As for where the larger redevelopment effort stands, Voll said that the city plans to go out to bid for development proposals for the Apex property, including the building itself and the grounds and parking lots around it, "sometime early next year."

"The mayor looks forward to receiving those proposals and hopes to truly maximize that location for all of its potential," Voll wrote.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Indoor pickleball court at Pawtucket's Apex building rejected for now