NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - North Salem has reached what it hopes is a compromise in the pickleball conundrum.
After neighbors of Joe Bohrdrum Park, where the popular paddle sport is played on the tennis courts, complained about the noise the town started looking for solutions.
That resulted in major pushback from pickleball players who feared that the game would be banned. Petitions were circulated and opinions were voiced at several town meetings.
Last September, Supervisor Warren Lucas noted that the general consensus among municipalities is that no pickleball court should be located within 500 feet of homes – unless it’s inside or has proper soundproofing.
The folks bothered by the racket live 187 feet away.
“Obviously we can’t move our tennis courts and we can’t move the houses so we were trying to come up with something that worked,” he said at the Town Board’s March 10 meeting.
Pickleball is noisy due to the combination of a hard plastic ball and composite paddles, which creates a high-pitched "pop" at a frequency that is easily perceived by the human ear.
This repetitive noise, amplified by hard court surfaces, can be particularly jarring to non-players.
The town looked around but couldn’t find another suitable location for pickleball. Moving pickleball to the basketball court would only shift the noise woes to people living on Eastern Way.
Somewhere along the line, the town’s Recreation Committee recommended that pickleball be limited to the hours of 9 a.m. to 12 noon, Mondays through Saturdays.
That didn’t go over at all well with some pickleball fans who prefer to play much earlier in the summer due to the heat.
Several of them spoke at the March 10 meeting, insisting that the game wasn’t that noisy.
“I’ve lived here a long time and all I’m asking is that I get to use the facility that is close to my home,” pickleball player Joan Staudinger told the board.
Sounding a bit frustrated, Lucas assured them that he would “love you to be there at 7 o’clock in the morning, but I have people living very, very close to this and the noise level is 100-110 decibels. That’s a problem.”
According to several online sources, 110 decibels is comparable to extremely loud machinery, industrial environments, or high-volume entertainment. It’s considered very loud and not only causes discomfort but can damage human hearing.
Deputy Supervisor Peter Kamenstein seemed to agree with the players that only three hours of court time six days a week would have been “too restrictive.”
Councilman Martin Aronchick noted that he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the Recreation Committee’s original recommendation, but thought that the board needed to reach a consensus and to “make a decision that’s fair to everyone.”
The new hours, he added, should be approached “flexibly” to see if the town might need to adjust them “one way or the other going forward.”
The board may revisit the sound barrier suggestion, Aronchick said later.
After some more back and forth, the board voted to allow pickleball at the park -- which is located off Sunset Drive -- from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.
The neighbors upset about the noise did not speak at the meeting.
The Highway Department is expected to post signage alerting folks to the new restrictions.
It was unclear last week how those would be enforced.
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