The Rolling Meadows Park District is about to embark on transformation of one of its biggest and most centrally-located parks with pickleball courts and a slew of other new activities.
The 27-acre Community Center Park will soon be home to two pickleball courts, under plans that recently received zoning approvals from the city council.
The two courts and other new park features will be north and west of the park building at 3800 Pheasant Drive — the former Salk School that now houses the park district’s preschool and senior center. Now open space, the area is about 30 feet south of the nearest single-family homes.
“The project aims to provide new, multi-generational amenities that are not present anywhere else in the community, as well as meet the demand for amenities growing in popularity, such as pickleball,” officials from Hitchcock Design Group, the district’s architect, wrote in an application to city hall.
A sketch shows new park amenities will be placed north and west of the Rolling Meadows Park District’s Community Center.
Courtesy of City of Rolling Meadows
During the formal public hearing before the city planning and zoning commission in July, at least three neighbors raised concerns about the potential for increased light, noise and activity from the pickleball courts.
That led the commission and city council to insert several conditions of approval in the final Aug. 27 ordinance granting the park district a special use permit for the project.
The rules include a mandate that the courts must close by 10 p.m. each night. A new 9-hole miniature golf course — to be built between the community center building and Salt Creek — can operate until sunset, officials said.
Because 60-by-74-foot pickleball court area will be illuminated by lights atop two 40-foot poles, city officials required the lights be button-operated with an automatic timer shut-off at 10 p.m.
To mitigate the sound of paddles hitting pickleballs, soundproofing material will be placed on the two sides of the courts’ chain-link fence that are nearest to homes.
An existing fence and evergreen trees separate three nearby homes from the park. Seven more evergreen trees will be planted as a buffer, according to plans.
The park district previously installed pickleball courts at Cardinal Drive Park. Two other parks in town — Florey Park and Countryside Park — offer tennis courts lined for pickleball.
Other upgrades at Community Center Park include two in-ground game areas for bag toss and ladder toss, a 40-yard dash, a Ninja Warrior-style challenge course, an outdoor bodyweight circuit training space, shuffleboard court, 20-by-20-foot picnic shelter, rain garden with interpretive signage, water detention basin next to the existing sled hill, and connecting pedestrian paths.
Approvals by the city council come two years after designs were unveiled at a park district community meeting. The district received a $600,000 Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
The grant parameters call for the project to be complete by April 30, 2025.