Pickleball tossed into Crandon Park Tennis Center pickle

Pickleball aficionados seeking to use Crandon Park Tennis Center on Key Biscayne are following the same required administrative path as the Miami Open, which tried to expand there and finally was forced to Hard Rock Stadium, where annual tournament play began this week.

Commissioners this month voted 12-0 with no discussion to direct Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to begin the process of allowing pickleball at the center. That road leads to a four-person committee that barred tennis expansion there in 2014.

The resolution by Commissioner Raquel Regalado, whose district includes the center, noted that pickleball – which combines elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis – has grown exponentially and players seek more courts.

But the only use now allowed on the courts where top tennis professionals once competed is tennis.

The barrier has been an agreement that the county commission approved in 2010 to settle a lawsuit that alleged the county had violated the park master plan that sprang from the 1940 donation of the 900 Crandon Park acres to the county by the Matheson family. In return, the family was pledged that the county would build a causeway from the mainland to Key Biscayne. The Rickenbacker Causeway opened in 1947.

The settlement requires that a four-member committee that includes Matheson representation vote on any attempt to alter the park’s master plan, which now limits use of the center to tennis.
Attempted passage through that committee was the death knell of attempts by the famed tennis tournament to expand its footprint.

Frustrated by the committee picking apart his company’s $50 million stadium expansion plan, open head Adam Barrett in 2014 said the tournament would be forced to leave if the plan failed.

The annual open had developed into one of the county’s highest-profile sports events, and organizers maintained that the world-class players, crowds and international broadcasts were bringing millions in economic benefits and publicity to Miami-Dade each year.

“I don’t believe, without these changes, that the event will be sustainable in Miami,” Mr. Barrett told Miami Today in 2014 after the amendment committee voted 3-1 to delay action on his plan.
The dissenting vote was by Bruce Matheson, who led opposition to center expansion. Another committee member, County Clerk Harvey Ruvin, died recently.

Referring to taller and brighter lights that would be part of a center expansion, Mr. Matheson said then that the tennis center “would look like an oil refinery.”

Sounding exasperated, Mr. Barrett said county voters had supported the expansion in November 2012 and it had been before the committee for about a year and a half.

If the expansion was thwarted, he told the committee then, “you’re going to end up with six clay courts and no tennis tournament – have fun.”