The United States Tennis Association (USTA) Helped Select Which Seattle Courts Would Be Resurfaced in 2024 and Beyond

Do you ever wonder why so many of the tennis courts with pickleball lines are in such bad shape and why so few of them get resurfaced every year?

Seattle Parks has a single budget item that covers the maintenance and resurfacing of public outdoor tennis and pickleball courts.

How would you fairly allocate this budget between the two sports?

In September 2023, Seattle Parks let the United States Tennis Association guide the selection of courts to be resurfaced in future years.

In 2024, all the tennis courts that were resurfaced were tennis-only courts. No tennis courts with pickleball lines were resurfaced.

In 2025, we expect the two dual-lined Mount Baker tennis courts to be resurfaced. All other resurfaced courts should once again be tennis-only.

What are you going to do about it?




The Miller Court Lights Saga

OCTOBER 2024:
How It Started

In or before October 2024, one of the two banks of lights allowing evening play on the Miller pickleball courts stops working, leaving half the courts in the dark.
Many players alerted Seattle Parks to the problem through the Find it Fix it app. Some of them, multiple times

DEC 21, 2024
How Many Days Will it Take for Seattle Parks to Fix the Miller Courts Lightbulbs?

One of the two banks of lights allowing evening play on the Miller pickleball courts stopped working quite a while ago, leaving half the courts in the dark. Players have requested Seattle Parks to fix it but haven’t heard back when the lighting will be restored.





Action Alert

Obviously, simply asking Seattle Parks to fix the lights is not working. So, let's ask Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth for help. The Miller courts are located in her district and she chairs the Parks, Public Utilities & Technology committee.

Click here to send her an email.
Don't worry, it's already written for you. Feel free to rewrite it though.

You can also leave her a voicemail at (206) 684-8803.



DEC 23, 2024 UPDATE:
Seattle Parks anticipates being able to BEGIN repair work on the Miller court lights in 1 to 2 months

One of the two banks of lights allowing evening play on the Miller outdoor pickleball courts stopped working quite a while ago, leaving half the courts in the dark. Many thanks to all of you who have taken the time to reach out to Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth to ask for help.

A few hours after receiving the first request, our councilmember replied that she was "on it". Less than twenty four hours later, her office sent the following email:

Good afternoon,

Thank you very much for you and other Miller Park frequenters for bringing this to our office’s attention. I have received the following response from Parks and Recreation on this matter: “I’m sorry to report that the lighting system was vandalized in a manner requiring the entire system to be replaced. The Work Order is in the queue, and we anticipate being able to begin repair work in 1-2 months”

I understand this is not the news you were hoping to hear, and deeply empathize with any reduced recreation this outage causes. I will also let Parks know that their communication efforts on such impactful matters must be improved. Thank you once again, and we wish you happy holidays.

Warmly,

Alex

Alex Altshuler (she/her/hers)
District Director, District 3
Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth
206.643.5153 | alex.altshuler@seattle.gov

We are grateful for Councilmember Hollingsworth's office speedy intervention.

We still question Seattle Parks' management of the issue.

  • Why did SPR choose not to communicate with the players in a timely fashion?
  • Did SPR consider providing an alternate play location while the Miller lights are out of commission?
  • Why such a long delay between when the issue was first reported and when the repair work even begins?

Our poll remains open:


MARCH 1 UPDATE:
Is Seattle Parks Slow Walking the Repair of the Miller Court Lights?

The East bank of lights that shine on the Miller tennis courts has been out of commission for over four months now, during the darkest part of the year. While the West bank of lights still works and provides a minimal amount of light on the East courts, this particularly affects anyone whose night vision is not optimal, such as older people.

Rumor has it that Seattle Parks is purposefully slow walking the repair of these lights. Allegedly, they are not delaying the repair, but they are also not speeding it up even though they could.

This can't possibly be true, can it?


MARCH 4 UPDATE:
No Timeline for Repair of the Miller Court Lights

Half of the Miller court lights have been out of commission since about October 2024.

On December 24, 2024, Seattle Parks posted "The issue was caused by vandalism and theft of the conduit wiring, as well as older equipment needing to be replaced. This is a large project that SPR is working to address but may persist for a couple more months while crews work to address other priorities in the queue of work"

Seattle Parks now says

"[...] there is not a timeline in place for repair because of the nature of the work, materials, and expertise required to fix them. While this seems unfavorable in the eyes of the public, SPR is still working on this issue and on the queue of all other issues occurring across the entire city with all our parks with the limited staff and time we have available."

June 4 UPDATE:
Miller Lights Fixed!

After not working for over 200 days, the Miller lights were finally fixed on June 4th, 2024. Just in time for the summer solstice.