02-06-2023 Park Commission Meeting Minutes

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO PARK COMMISSION February 6, 2023 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 10 of 14 summer; you can play up until it snows. It's a great sport. Thinking of the neighbors on option two, I would like you to look at the noise, and the effects of that. I picture maybe a couple of moms playing pickleball and their young kids are in the league, families kind of doing both things. I just am excited about you doing some more talking about it. And I know there needs to be more exploring. It's not going to ruin the golf course; it'll stay a gem. But stay with the times and keep attracting more people to come and live in Orono. I support (the plan). I think it's a great idea. Jack Reily 2130 Shadywood Road, Orono. I play golf. I play pickleball. And I know that both sports have pulled my family together. My granddaughter, who also lives in Orono, is a teenager and she plays golf with me several times a year during the summer. And as a family, three generations of us, usually two to three times a month, we play pickleball, both winter and summer and would love to have a facility outdoors in Orono where we could do that, hopefully for generations, God willing. I respect the history of this golf course. It is special, but it's not unique, so don't overplay that too much. There are already 60 golf courses in Minnesota that will be 100 years old by next year. By the end of the decade, there will be 100 golf courses in Minnesota that are that old. So it is special, but not necessarily unique. Unique to Orono? Yes. The golf course may be the wrong place. It may be shoehorning something in that doesn't belong there. But if you decide through workshop or otherwise that you're not going to proceed with that site, I think you owe it to the rest of us in the community that do want to come together and play pickleball on good courts in an outdoor location, preferably, that you have an obligation to find us that place and work with us, the community, to raise the money to do that. I think this thing got snowballed. It started with four pickleball courts for a price that we could get maybe half from the County. And then let's throw in improving the clubhouse. Let's put in a hockey rink. Let's put in a firepit. Let's put in a new shelter, etc, etc. Now people are able to say four pickleball courts are gonna cost over a million dollars, and that's not really the case. But again, if you do decide to have this workshop, or if you don't, because you just think it's a done fact that it's not going to happen at the golf course, I think the park board has an obligation to the citizens of Orono to find a safe place to enjoy our sport and work with us to get that built. Penny Saiki ,2874 Casco Point Road. I like golf. I like pickleball. And I love the disclosure that Janie Delaney said that there was a point where you're considering recycling the Public Works building here for pickleball. And there's a huge lot out there for hockey and outdoor courts. That's a huge space that the city owns already. We're not even 3,200 houses in Orono. And I don't know why we need three fire stations; two can cover the 3,200 houses. I mean, that's really special to have 1000 people for every station. And we're a special city, but I don't think we need to be that special. And as far as the golf course goes, I think one of the historic things is that it's not irrigated. My dad played it once and he said it is historic because that's the way golf started, you know, like in Scotland with the grouse and everything. It's natural, and it's a hole over there with your ball to get there. But you don't need to make it Pebble Beach. It can be the historic nature it is what it is naturally. My dad called it a cow path, but it's still the whole thing of when it's rainy, you get a nice lawn, but naturally it's a hill in a hole.