Rehearing planned for Longboat Key pickleball proposal

A plan put forth by the Longboat Key Club to build four pickleball courts adjacent to its Harbourside Tennis Gardens will be reheard by the town’s Planning and Zoning Board on June 21 and not by the Town Commission on June 6 as originally scheduled, town officials said Thursday.

Following an April public hearing before the Planning and Zoning Board, at which the pickleball-court proposal was unanimously recommended to the Town Commission for approval, residents of the nearby Winding Oaks community raised objections about potential noise, and many complained they had not been notified of the meeting until after it had taken place. The town began investigating the mailings and learned the club’s representative in the project met the town's 14-day requirement, but the notices did not arrive in many cases until too late. 

Complicating matters: now-moot June 6 notifications are arriving in the mail at residents’ homes about the now-cancelled commission agenda item, said Longboat Key director of planning, zoning and building Allen Parsons, adding those should be disregarded. New notifications for the rescheduled hearing are coming soon, he said. 

Appearing at the Planning and Zoning Board's May 17 meeting, attorney Edward Willner of the Sarasota firm of Lobeck and Hanson, made a request for the rehearing on behalf of the Winding Oaks residents. 

"Our members do have concerns about the proposed development and would like to be heard at the public hearing, and so we’re requesting that  since they were not notified in an appropriate way and had no opportunity to be heard that the public hearing be reopened before the process goes any further,'' Willner told board members.

In describing a possible timeline, Parsons said assuming an up-or-down recommendation is delivered by the members of the Planning and Zoning Board on June 21, the earliest the measure could reach the Town Commission for consideration would be Sept. 12 -- following the Town Commission's regularly scheduled summer break through July and August. 

Because the proposal for the pickleball courts would require a change in the property's previous Planned Unit Development approval, a second public hearing would have to be scheduled before commissioners in October. 

Most of the objections raised by residents focused on the sounds of pickleball and their ability to carry across a waterway separating the courts from the homes.

During the original Planning and Zoning hearing, the issue was raised by board member Jay Plager, who recalled a tiff over pickleball courts at the Bird Key Yacht Club in 2017.

“The neighbors raised such a fuss that they gave it up because pickleball courts do have a very distinct sound, as you know,” he said.

Mike Rissman, vice president of engineering with George F. Young Inc., said the courts adjacent to the tennis facility would be a consistent use but he didn’t expect any issues.

“I know one of the complaints about pickleball courts is the funny noise the ball makes when it hits the racket or the paddle, but I don’t really anticipate the sound is really going to travel any more than the tennis courts,” he said.