After fed-up neighbors file suit, Upper Main Line YMCA pauses pickleball, ‘explores options’
The outdoor courts are padlocked but the racket over pickleball at the Upper Main Line Y (UMLY) is far from over.
After two years of back-and-forth with UMLY and Easttown officials that cut the hours of play but failed to quell the din to their satisfaction, neighbors decided to play hardball – they sued.
Standing firmly in their corner: local land-use attorney Phil Rosenzweig, who’s made a career out of crusades for the little guy.
Among his local skirmishes, Rosenzweig championed neighbors’ fights over stadium lights at Lower Merion High School, bulldozers at historic Oakwell in Villanova, and the development of Willistown’s Rockhill Farm. When he was a Lower Merion Commissioner, he wrote the resolution that banished the threat of eminent domain for private gain in Ardmore.
These days, he’s a field general in the pickleball wars. The UMLY lawsuit is his 12thpickleball action.
“I’m really charged up about this because it’s just not right,” Rosenzweig tells SAVVY. “Just because pickle is a hot sport, it doesn’t mean that should take precedence over the quality of life for residential neighbors. Businesses and governments are rushing to find spots to put this stuff. This is literally about whether people have the ability to live peacefully in their homes. Why should any taxpaying citizen be subject to conditions that make it impossible to live there? It’s just offensive.”….
On May 16, three weeks after papers were served, the Y closed its outdoor courts until further notice, sending players scrambling just as the season was heating up.
Among other charges, the suit alleges the Y’s 2022 conversion of clay tennis courts to 12 hard-surfaced pickleball courts was not “simply trading one racquet sport for another” but was a “substantive, massive change” that violated township zoning code and noise ordinances.
The suit claims homeowners’ have suffered “irreparable harm” – with their physical and mental health threatened, their daily lives disrupted, and their right to enjoy peace and quiet in their own homes and yards denied.
Also alleged: the township turned a blind eye to ongoing infractions and conspired with the Y to protect pickleball, “synching narratives” and encouraging the Y to have pickleball players speak at supervisors meetings.
…. “We had a wonderful caring community of pickleball players at the Y that the neighbors blew up with their mean-spirited lawsuit,” player Cathy Rubenstone tells SAVVY. “We are devastated that the Y closed the courts forcing us all to different venues to play.”
Goodness gracious. One would think the chair of another municipality’s planning commission would not be such a salty bitch to residents in a neighboring municipality. She certainly puts the pickle in pickle-puss. Isn’t she the one that used to say there would be no roosters in residential neighborhoods in Willistown?
Anyway read the whole article. It’s fabulous. Caroline O’Halloran did a great job and the pickle of it all is still very much happening in Easttown, complete with a full complement of pickle-pusses.
