The "noise pollution" created by outdoor pickleball courts has once again made the local news, as a condo association in downtown San Francisco has filed a lawsuit over pickleball noise.
Around 150 condo owners at the Golden Gateway Commons development (550 Davis Street) have had it with the incessant pok-pokking of pickleball paddles hitting balls at the next door Bay Club, and they've filed suit. As the Chronicle reports, the homeowners association is demanding that the private fitness club "immediately cease the offensive noise pollution emanating from its pickleball facilities."
They say that the pickleball courts create "constant, unbearable, and offensive noise," and "Such noise pollution derives from the sharp ‘popping’ sound produced by the impact between a pickleball and a paddle — a distinct noise not resembling that of a tennis racket and tennis ball."
As it states, the lawsuit comes after months of back-and-forth between the condo owners and the Bay Club, including a cease-and-desist letter, which the club responded to by making some changes. The Bay Club reportedly wrote to the condo association in May telling them they had installed sound-dampening curtains, and had limited hours of play, not allowing pickleball games to begin before 9 am.
Per the Chronicle, the condo association went as far as to hire a consultant to do a noise assessment this fall, and they found that while ambient noise levels in the area were between 52.6 to 53.3 decibels, the pickleball noise exceeded 70 decibels — and the maximum allowable extra noise should be only 8 decibels, the lawsuit states.
While the Bay Club has not directly responded to the lawsuit yet, their predicament seems clear. Pickleball courts have been a majorly in-demand amenity around the city since the sport took off in popularity during the pandemic, and avid players may just go elsewhere if these courts get shut down.
With the rampant popularity of pickleball nationwide, the complaints from people who live near courts have skyrocketed as well. The New York Times covered the issue in June, noting that all that pok-pok noise has "brought on a nationwide scourge of frayed nerves and unneighborly clashes — and those, in turn, have elicited petitions and calls to the police and last-ditch lawsuits aimed at the local parks, private clubs and homeowners associations that rushed to open courts during the sport’s recent boom."
Here in SF, we saw a petition circulated last year by a couple of homeowners in Presidio Heights, complaining of the "relentless pickleball games" happening at the Presidio Wall courts, all 12 of which had traditionally been tennis courts but which were all being used for pickleball. The complaint and the petition drew plenty of laughter when it was revealed that the complainant, Holly Peterson, had a private pickleball court in the backyard of her home adjacent to the Presidio Wall courts — a home that she and her venture capitalist husband had put on the market for $36 million.
It ended up selling for well under that, $24 million, and we don't know if pickleball noise was a factor.
Meanwhile, the SF Recreation & Parks Department seemed to at least hear some of the complaints, and in January 2024 they announced the removal of pickleball nets from half of the Presidio Wall courts, deeming them "unauthorized." Six of the 12 courts which had previously been retrofitted for pickleball remain open for use.
Until someone invents a quieter pickleball paddle, the complaints don't look to be ending anytime soon. As neighbors who live near courts in Maine, Massachusetts, and Florida told the Times in June, "It’s a torture technique," and "It’s like having a pistol range in your backyard," and "Pickleball has replaced leaf blowers as my No. 1 noise nuisance."
Photo: Sean Whittendon
