Indoor pickleball association makes play for Thorold arena

The Niagara Indoor Pickleball Association is looking for a dedicated venue — and they think they have found it in the James Whyte Arena.

As ThoroldToday reported, the city decommissioned the arena over a year ago, and now they’re trying to figure out what to do with the vacant, dry space.

On Monday evening, members of the Niagara Indoor Pickleball Association gave a presentation at a meeting of the Parks, Trails and Recreation Committee — in hopes of convincing them of the project.

“We are looking for a long-term lease,” association member Andrew Sterk told committee members. “We don’t want to just have it for three nights out of the week or four hours once a week — We want the building to be used on a consistent basis from 8 o’clock in the morning until 10 o’clock at night.”

According to Sterk, the association has over 500 active players, spread out among three Niagara pickleball clubs.

“What we have found is that there are too many players sitting,” he said. “Most of us are paying to play but not playing. We found that there is just an over flux of people on a consistent basis.”

The Niagara Indoor Pickleball Association would prefer not to share the space with other indoor sports such as ball hockey.

“We have two different floors so it’s just not compatible to have a multi-purpose use in that case,” said Sterk. “Because we will have so much use out of the building and so many players playing we’ll just be busy all the time which is what we need.”

Sterk thinks the arena could comfortably fit six to nine pickleball courts, but the building would first need to undergo the necessary upgrades.

“The floor is very important,” Sterk said. “We need something that’s clean, where we don’t have to worry about anyone slipping. Lighting is very important as well. In a perfect world we’d love to have heating and A/C, and an area for folks to be able to sit and lounge.”

Getting the arena pickleball ready could be a costly affair.

“If we wanted to do everything we wanted to do to the building, the cost would be between $4M to $5M,” Sterk said. “To get started we would need the floor, lights and some sort of heating would be required. I don’t know how much that would cost.”

To finance the project, the association plans to rely on grants.

“We were looking at being funded by the Trillium Foundation,” the association’s president, James Fraser, told committee members. “We don’t want to take funds away from the City of Thorold. Keep in mind that this is re-purposing an old building through grants.”

While committee members voiced enthusiasm for the idea, they also expressed hesitation about the financial picture.

“There are a lot of issues with the building,” said committee chair Kieran Daniels. “To spend that kind of money to service the pickleball association seems like a lot of onus on the taxpayers of Thorold.”

A City Hall report on the future of the James Whyte Arena will be presented to city council at a later date.