Pickleball courts in West Hollywood are getting dedicated space for the first time, after the City Council voted 5-0 last week to convert two shared courts at Plummer Park to pickleball-only use.
Courts 6 and 7 at the park have been available to both tennis and pickleball players. Under the Council’s direction, the reservation system for those two courts will be restricted to pickleball only beginning April 1st. A second phase will restripe the courts permanently for pickleball, with funding to be requested in the Fiscal Year 2026–2027 budget.
The item was brought forward by Councilmember John Erickson. He said he was done waiting. “I’ve been having a pickleball tennis conversation for as long as I’ve been on this council,” Erickson said. “Six and seven. That’s kind of where I was at.”
Staff told the Council that Plummer Park recorded roughly 16,000 pickleball reservations and 14,000 tennis reservations during a six-month period in 2025. Of approximately 34,600 total registered users at the park, about 1,200 are West Hollywood residents. Staff said they did not have a breakdown of that resident figure by sport. They said they could get the numbers but didn’t have them at that moment.
Councilmember Lauren Meister, who sits with Erickson on the Plummer Park Subcommittee, said she wanted more data first, including how the 1,200 resident users broke down between the two sports. Meister said most people who showed up to speak at subcommittee meetings were not West Hollywood residents, and said she was concerned the City was being asked to solve a pickleball shortage created by the City of Los Angeles.
Hold the paddle
Councilmember John Heilman said he supported dedicated pickleball space but wanted the striping kept flexible enough to accommodate special events, including the annual Pride tennis tournament, which has historically used all seven Plummer Park courts. “I don’t want us to create a situation where that tournament then no longer has a place to operate in the city,” Heilman said.
Councilmember Chelsea Byers said the issue came down to equity. “For so long, we have sort of denied a sport’s existence by not allowing them to have dedicated space to build community,” Byers said. “It’s long past time that we create that dedicated space.”
Staff told the Council that transitioning courts 6 and 7 to pickleball-only reservations would require working with Tennacity on the changeover, because the current contract ties the operator’s revenue split to programming hours. Staff said they would need to run the numbers on the fiscal impact before returning to the Council with recommendations for the restriping phase.
Tennacity has agreed to work with the City on the reservation system transition, staff said. The operator will not be able to be directed unilaterally to give up programming hours or revenue without a formal contract amendment approved by the Council.
Courts 6 and 7 are already striped for both sports, so no physical changes are needed for the first phase. Courts 1 and 2 will remain dedicated tennis courts. Courts 3, 4 and 5 are used daily by court operator Tennacity for lessons and programming. Staff said those courts are available for public reservation when Tennacity is not actively using them.
Three courts at West Hollywood Park on the rooftop are also striped for pickleball, providing six pickleball configurations at that location.
Recreation Manager Stephanie Martinez said Tennacity has agreed to work with the City on the transition. Staff plans a public outreach period in March before the reservation changes take effect April 1.
Used balls, no place to go
The Council vote came the same week a group of Los Angeles County high school students launched a drive to recycle used tennis and pickleball balls before they reach a landfill.
The students are working through a program called Another Bounce, an initiative of the Brentwood-based nonprofit Habits of Waste. An estimated 500 million tennis and pickleballs are thrown away worldwide each year. In the United States alone, 125 million tennis balls end up in landfills annually, according to Stanford University research cited by the organization. The balls are not biodegradable and take more than 400 years to decompose.
A dozen students from schools including Crossroads, Brentwood, Loyola, Harvard-Westlake and Windward are leading the collection effort. Among them are Ford and Boone Casady, 16-year-old twin brothers from Crossroads School in Santa Monica who rank among the top junior pickleball players in the country. “There’s been nowhere for these balls to go,” Ford Casady said. “It’s generally such a waste.”
The campaign is collecting balls within a 30-mile radius of Pacific Palisades and accepting mailed donations at a Santa Monica warehouse. A community collection event is scheduled for April 19, with donations to be counted by Earth Day on April 22.
The students are also speaking at city council meetings in Los Angeles and Santa Monica to push for ordinances requiring parks, schools and clubs to recycle used balls. They are separately pressing major manufacturers including Wilson and Penn to establish take-back programs. West Hollywood’s City Council did not appear on the organization’s list of stops — but since City Council members read WEHOonline (even if some are loath to admit it) consider this story their stop.
West Hollywood has no ball recycling program at either Plummer Park or West Hollywood Park. Neither the City nor Tennacity currently provides collection bins or drop-off options for used tennis or pickleball balls at either location.
WEHOonline reached out to Tennacity to ask whether ball recycling would be considered at either facility. A Tennacity staff member said the operator has no official ball recycling program but has been thinking about it and looking into options. One idea already under consideration: donating used balls to dogs at the Plummer Park dog park once that facility opens. The staff member said Tennacity loved the Another Bounce campaign and asked WEHOonline to send a link so they could explore how to help. Who knows, West Hollywood could end up with a recycling program because of it.
Guinness World Records confirmed to LAist it does not currently track a title for most tennis and pickleballs collected for recycling. The organization is monitoring a record for most tennis balls collected for recycling in one week. No one currently holds it. The minimum to qualify is 579 pounds.
Used balls can be mailed to: C. Wiebe (HoW Donation), 3000 31st St., Suite C, Santa Monica, CA 90405. Pickup can be arranged by emailing another.bounce@gmail.com. More information is at anotherbounce.org.
Pickleball has brought some great new energy to Plummer Park and a lot of new users. While the noise can be annoying, it helps brings a new vibrancy to the park.