Pickleball noise serves up drama, police calls in Twin Cities suburbs

Dan Mutka tried closing his windows and turning up the TV, but nothing could drown out the maddening thwack reverberating from the pickleball courts near his Maple Grove home.

“I would correlate it to somebody pounding on your roof with a hammer, putting up shingles, day after day after day,” said Mutka, who lives by Fish Lake Woods Park.

The exploding popularity of pickleball has turned into a migraine for some residents living with the high-pitched “pop, pop, pop.” The sport has become a staple of parks and athletic complexes, but it has also sparked noise complaints, neighborhood feuds and lawsuits across the country.

In the Twin Cities, some suburbs including Apple Valley have paid for sound studies, tried to mitigate the noise and removed courts over neighborhood concerns. Most recently in Maple Grove, the commotion led to a ban, a petition pushing back and even two police calls.

Maple Grove this spring repainted courts and posted “PICKLEBALL IS PROHIBITED” signs at Fish Lake Woods Park, explaining the sport would no longer be allowed at the park due to noise disturbances.

It was a welcome development for irritated neighbors. But it sparked major pushback from regular pickleball players, who started a change.org petition to have them reinstated. The spat has gone so far that police were called on residents playing the forbidden game.

“I was shocked it was outright banned,” neighbor John Messerly said. “I know there are lots of people in the neighborhood who use the courts. We needed to make our voices heard.”

Maple Grove officials explored how to reduce sound at the park, where pickleball courts are as close as 70 feet from some homes. Parks and Planning Superintendent Ben Jaszewski said officials debated costly noise barriers and sound studies. But the city ultimately relied on research that recommended against building courts within 200 feet of homes, and using sound abatement strategies within 500 feet.

The dispute has led city leaders to reconsider rules for where pickleball courts should be allowed, an issue more Minnesota cities are now tackling. The Maple Grove park board is expected to discuss pickleball standards at a June 18 meeting.

In the meantime, pickleball lovers and frustrated neighbors across the metro are debating: Is the sport really that obnoxiously loud?

Some Maple Grove neighbors argue that residents who choose to live near parks already put up with the sounds of kids screaming and people playing basketball. Pickleball noise can’t be that much worse.

But the high pitch of a hard paddle hitting a plastic ball at sporadic intervals is uniquely triggering.

“It’s not a continuous noise, like the sound of the furnace in your house. That’s a continuous, background noise that we can get used to,” said acoustical engineer Ryan Skoug, with ESI Engineering in Minneapolis.

“Pickleball creates what we call a highly impulsive noise. It startles us. It triggers a fight-or-flight reaction in us.”

Skoug said the smack of the paddle comes at a frequency people are highly sensitive to.

“I sort of jokingly compare it to a prehistoric man out walking in the woods, worried about lions or something else that might attack him,” he said. “He listens for that ‘crack’ of a twig or a stick, alerting him someone is getting close to him. It’s that ‘crack’ that we hear that makes it so alerting to us.”

The sound of a basketball being dribbled is a much lower frequency, he said. Kids screaming might startle neighbors, but it’s less frequent than the incessant pop from a busy pickleball court.

Skoug said his firm has received a growing number of requests for pickleball sound studies. He said the issue persists at indoor courts, too, as retailers sharing walls with pickleball complexes complain about the noise driving away customers.

At Hayes Park in Apple Valley, another neighborhood disagreed over how to handle the racket.

After trying to mitigate the sound, Parks and Recreation Director Eric Carlson said the city eventually shut down the courts and built new ones elsewhere.

Many factors determine how annoying pickleball might be for neighbors, including how much background noise there is. Skoug said the courts off Crosstown Hwy. 62, at Rosland Park in Edina, are in a prime location because the traffic is noisy enough to abate the pickleball “pings.” A quiet neighborhood will more easily be bothered.

Cities in Minnesota and across the country have made attempts at reducing the sound, by asking players to use special equipment or adding noise walls. The Minnesota League of Cities recently recommended that cities consider establishing setbacks regulating where courts can go, as other strategies are more difficult to enforce.

After the game was banned at Fish Lake Woods Park, Jaszewski said Maple Grove has plenty of other pickleball opportunities, including 18 courts at Lakeview Knolls Park. He said officials are trying to find the right balance to meet the high demand for pickleball while also addressing neighbors’ concerns.

Living next to his newly pickleball-free park, Mutka said he’s finally enjoying sitting outside on his deck again.

“If you’ve never lived next to a pickleball court,” he said, “you probably wouldn’t understand the depth of the annoyance it creates.”