The City of Canby this week broke ground on a tournament-ready suite of four regulation-size pickleball courts at North Maple Street Park — which is intended to complement the new splash pad at that location and add yet another amenity to the community’s menu of recreational offerings.
Each court will be individually fenced, with four-foot-tall fencing separating the courts, the city said in a press release. The courts will be green and blue asphalt, with black-dyed concrete separating each playing surface.
The courts will be lighted with motion-activated LED lights, and a second gazebo installed to complement the new gazebo that was constructed with the new splash pad. The project will also include concrete benches intended to separate the splash pad and pickleball courts.
“There has been a lot of positive feedback from the community,” Barry Johnson, chair of the Canby Parks and Recreation Board, said in a press release. “The majority of people I’ve spoken with are looking forward to the pickleball courts and it seems to me the public will be very excited.”
The pickleball courts have been made possible with funding from the city and generous donations by Dr. Ashley McFerron of Canby Eyecare and Mark and Laurie Shuholm and family.
Mark Shuholm encourages community members to give to the services and organizations that make Canby unique if they are able and called the pickleball partnership a “positive experience I have not seen in other communities.”
The pickleball courts are expected to be finished in November, depending on weather. For any questions regarding the project, call 503-266-0789.
Pickleball is a hybrid of tennis, badminton and ping pong, and by some accounts the fastest-growing sport in America. It is for all ages and abilities, but is particularly popular with older adults as a lower-impact alternative to tennis.
City leaders faced some criticism in July for their decision to move forward with the pickleball project rather than building new tennis courts to replace the ones removed in 2019 to make way for the new splash pad.
At the time, Canby tennis enthusiasts had no other courts that were free and open to the public.
That is still technically the case, but the Canby School District had helped to mitigate that concern by making the tennis courts at Canby High School available to the community outside of school hours or use by Canby athletics — no code or reservation required.
For more information about those courst, call the high school at 503-263-7200.
Cover photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/45947393111/in/photostream/“>Michael & Sherry Martin, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.