Even though a decision about building a proposed 12-court pickleball complex at Tucker Recreation Center appears to be delayed until 2027, opponents to its constructions are bringing in some heavy hitters to the battle, including a Heisman Trophy winner.
The Tucker City Council at its April 14 meeting reviewed a proposed 2026 capital improvement list that deferred any funding for the courts until 2027. However, Tucker resident Megan Neyer, during the public comment portion of the meeting, prior to the formal meeting, read a letter from her friend, former Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who urged the council to listen to public input before deciding where to build the courts.
“As you may recall, I attended a city council meeting a few years back, expressing my appreciation for the sport of pickleball and to encourage the city of Tucker to proceed in building more pickleball courts,” the missive, written on Wuerffel Foundation stationary, said. “I still am as enthusiastic about the positive aspects of pickleball as I’ve ever been, and I’m happy to hear the city of Tucker has continued their efforts to provide more courts for its residents to play America’s fastest growing sport.”
However, Wuerffel said he has had conversations with some of the residents near the proposed site, “and they have strong concerns about the proximity of the courts and the subsequent noise issues.”
“While I am certainly not a noise expert, I have worked for almost 30 years in community development and have learned how vital it is to have community support for projects like this to be successful,” the letter continued.
The former NFL player, who played with the New Orleans Saints, Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins before retiring in 2002, urged the council to “go the extra mile in listening to the local residents, pay special attention to their reports on the potential devastating effects of the noise, and after considering all the information, make the best decision possible for the city of Tucker.”
The construction of the complex has been under fire since fall of 2024, when neighbors living on and around Morgan Road raised concerns about the location of the courts, saying that the noise and additional traffic to the area would adversely impact their property values and peace of mind.
In addition to gaining Wuerffel’s support, the group opposing the courts in March commissioned an impact study from Charles E. Leahy, who identified himself in a 14-page report as a pickleball noise consultant and researcher. Leahy, in the analysis, refuted the findings of Appeggio, the company that the city engaged to do its own impact study.
“The principal problem with the Arpeggio noise study is that it is incomplete,” the report said. “It is a decibel noise study. It only looks at the noise through the lens of a decibel sound meter and computer decibel models. Decision makers are better served by a comprehensive plain language understanding of the total noise experience, including critical human annoyance factors such as impulsiveness, frequency, number of noise events created on 12 courts, the cumulative effect of long-term daily noise exposures over a period of weeks and years, etc.”
In addition, Leahy’s report said Tucker center is not a good candidate for pickleball courts because of its proximity to residential property.
“Distances are normally measured from the closest player (the player hitting at the court line closest to the property line), rather than from the center of the court as done by Arpeggio in its estimation of 160 feet to the Morgan properties,” the narrative said. “This would place the distance to the Morgan properties as 138 feet.”
Leahy’s report said other public courts, including in San Clemente, Calif., built sound-reducing walls and limited its hours of operation, but were forced to close because of citizen complaints.
In addition, the report claims that parking around the center is insufficient to handle the traffic that pickleball players would bring, and urges the city look at other locations, including within industrial parks, outdoor areas around airports, or in vacant big box stores.
The Tucker City Council, during previous meetings, has said there is no timetable for the project, and its website says that it is “on pause for further due diligence and analysis.”
