Tennis Club drops pickleball expansion

By NEAL RENTZ

A proposal from the Pound Ridge Tennis Club looks like it will have a second life. 

At the Dec. 19 Pound Ridge Planning Board meeting, representatives of the club provided a new proposal which does not call for construction of new pickleball courts.

The planning board agreed to vote on an approval resolution when it meets Thursday, Jan. 23.

The club, located at 2 Major Lockwood Lane, was seeking site plan approval for the construction of four new pickleball courts, one new paddleball court and deck, expansion of the two existing parking lots and approval for the club’s plan to build an addition to the existing clubhouse.

But at the November meeting, several neighbors continued to criticize the proposal and none of the board members supported the project. 

After no planning board member spoke in favor of the proposals following the November public hearing, Keith Betensky, an attorney representing the club, said his client would consider coming back to the board with a revised application for December.

At that meeting, Betensky noted the board had previously called for a revised proposal without new pickleball courts and associated parking. The recently submitted plan responded to those concerns, he said, adding that a parking study for the revised proposal has also been submitted.

Dawn McKenzie, senior project landscape architect from Insite Engineering, told the board the proposed new parking spaces would be placed away from a pond that is on the club’s property. The proposed parking spaces would be striped, she said. There are 40 parking spaces on the revised site plan, she noted.

There’s no land-banked parking included in the revised plan, McKenzie said. 

Land banking allows space that would be required for parking to be set aside and preserved.

“We had 58 (spaces) and we were going to land bank” as part of the previous plan, she said. 

Planning Board Chair Rebecca Wing said the traffic study that was recently provided to the board indicated that when the club is most crowded, 40 parking spaces are needed.

The revised proposal “definitely addressed the concerns that have been raised,” Wing said. A vote to approve the revised application could be approved by the board at its Jan. 23 meeting, she said. 

The club is scheduled to go before the town’s water control commission for its approval Wednesday, Jan. 8.

One of the conditions of approval from the planning board should be a landscaping plan, Wing said. 

Currently, pickleball is limited to two courts and is not part of the club’s application.