Bay Village, Ohio – Last year 2023 shut its basketball court in Reese Park when a gunshot was fired.
The city officials confirmed that no one got injured, as it was an isolated incident.
Early we realized that the city had moved on with plans to remove baseball courts and convert them into pickleball courts entirely.
The half of the baseball court has been converted into a restroom near pickleball courts.
Leaders said that this change was due to the interest of pickleball in the community. Couple with the prior incident.
“There’s a great demand. We have four courts down at Reese Park—we converted to tennis courts a few years ago. And the residents need more. So, the sport continues to grow. The younger kids, the children of this community are now playing,” Dan Enovitch, Director of Parks and Rec City of Bay Village, said.
The courts are nearly to be completed.
Whereas, caution tape is still in place. The team is finalizing the work to transform the ex-basketball court into 4 more pickleball courts.
Bay Village’s Mayor decided to close down the full basketball court after an incident at the court where a gunshot was fired last Summer(June 2023).
A councilperson confirmed the administration wanted to convert the court to pickleball courts regardless of a vote.
During a March meeting, the mayor previously said having a half-court at the park was a compromise.
Several months back— in a 6-1 vote council authorized the mayor to agree to the conversion.
The cost is more than thirty-five thousand Dollars and is covered via a grant.
“We’re excited. We’re looking forward to meeting the needs of the residents. We get a lot of feedback from residents regarding the pickleball courts,” Enovitch said.
While the city says this will benefit everyone of all ages, some locals say the timing isn’t good with so many students on break.
“You know, it’s unfortunate for the Bay residents, especially the high school and college kids coming back because it just makes one less court for us to be able to play on, and other than this court, you only have Bradley that they care about,” Owen Cooper, a Bay Village resident, said.
They’ve even called this a band-aid effort to erase the prior incident.
“It took them a while, but they’re finally deciding to just not worry about that and just turn the pickleball court.
It’s so people don’t come from like a lot of Cleveland State students would come here, and I think they wanted to get rid of that,” Cooper said.
The projectis nearly to be completed within few weeks.
