New Pickleball Courts at LBCC

In a unique joint venture, the city of Albany has let a contract to build new pickleball courts utilizing the existing old courts at Linn Benton Community College. The $330,000 contract will renovate the old tennis courts into 8 dedicated pickleball courts and a “sports court” that is lined for one tennis court and 4 temporary pickleball courts. LBCC has, of course , supplied the land and will provide maintenance for the life of the courts. The construction should start in earnest the week of 4/27. The courts should be completed by mid July. We will post updates and pics of the construction as it moves along.

We are excited about the city decision to fund the court construction. The community will have excellent courts to play on and we appreciate the work of the city to provide new courts for our fast-growing sport.

Current Status:
When the city decided to build the new courts, we requested to have lights on 4 courts, a tournament desk pad and conduit for speaker wire. Due to funding these were pulled from the contract.

The Albany Pickleball Club has been working with the city since our inception in 2012 to get new courts. The Club has been generating funds through tournaments and dues earmarked for construction or improvements for new courts. We tried to fund lighting for 4 of the new courts through a change order in the new contract but the costs were more than we could cover. The current contract included LED security lights on the 2 existing poles on the east and west sides. The club was able to fund a light upgrade for the 2 east side poles (parking lot side) to provide partial lighting for pickleball play on the first 2 courts. This will position the courts to have another set of lights and poles to be placed sometime in the future, if play and demand shows we need it.

The board has been negotiating an agreement with the city for club play. We expect that to be completed prior to the courts opening. The board is looking at other improvements like a shed for our equipment and shade covers in addition to court lights.

Here are some of the “before” pics.