Palm Beach County Residents Beat Pickleball Court Plans With Recall Petitions And Lawsuits
- A Palm Beach County homeowner collected more than 100 petition signatures against a pickleball conversion 10 feet from her home, and the board members she targeted for recall resigned before the project was scrapped entirely.
- A second community, Polo Trace near Delray Beach, has a court expansion on hold after a May lawsuit asked a judge to block new courts and halt all pickleball play at the property over noise.
- A court builder that works across Florida says pickleball measures about 70 decibels compared with roughly 40 to 45 decibels for tennis, a gap it calls the real driver of the noise complaints reaching HOA boards.
A Recall Petition Just Beat A Pickleball Court Plan In Boca Raton
Monika Mazgal lives at Crescent Lakes, a gated community of 268 homes near Boca Raton. A year ago, her HOA board approved a plan to convert two clay tennis courts into pickleball courts positioned within 10 feet of her house. She responded by collecting more than 100 signatures on petitions opposing the project.
The board did not change course. So Mazgal launched a recall campaign against the members who approved it. The targeted board members resigned from their positions. Then, recently, the new board told residents there would be no pickleball courts at Crescent Lakes at all. The two existing clay courts will instead be resurfaced in asphalt to cut maintenance costs, with no new fencing or lighting added.
The board’s message to residents read: “Due to continued concerns, significant opposition, and increasingly contentious communications, the Board has decided to halt the proposed multi-court project in its current form. The existing two tennis courts will be converted from clay to asphalt. New fencing and lighting will not be included.”
Mazgal credited an earlier Palm Beach Post story on the dispute for pushing the board to change its position.
Down The Road, A Lawsuit Is Freezing A Different Court Project
At Polo Trace, a community west of Delray Beach, the fight has moved past petitions and into court. The property already has four pickleball courts. Plans called for adding two more and removing a tennis court to make room. Some of the single-family homes there sit within 100 feet of the courts.
A lawsuit filed in May seeks to block the expansion outright and go further: it asks the court to stop all pickleball play at the community, arguing the noise amounts to a nuisance. The Polo Trace board recently told residents that “the pending litigation may affect the anticipated timeline for the conversion project.”
Homeowners at both communities describe the same complaint in different words: a sport built around a hard paddle striking a hard ball produces a sharp, repetitive pop that carries into nearby living rooms and bedrooms. HOA boards, meanwhile, point to resident demand for more places to play a sport that keeps adding participants faster than facilities can be built.
The Case That Started It: A 70-Foot Buffer Wasn’t Enough
Both disputes trace back to the county’s first pickleball-noise lawsuit, filed against the HOA at Parkside at Boca Trail in Boca Raton. Plaintiff Richard Kitt lives about 70 feet from the courts there. “It is like they are playing in my kitchen,” he said.
Court filings say the Parkside HOA’s own acoustical study found the pickleball noise exceeded Boca Raton’s daytime noise limits. The HOA has declined to comment on the suit. In its own filings, it argues it is permitted to change the makeup of its recreation center, that residents knew that possibility existed when they bought homes next to the complex, and that the change simply answers overwhelming demand for pickleball courts. That case is expected to go to trial this month.
Why Pickleball Sounds Louder Than The Sport It Replaced
Mor-Sports Group, a court builder based in Estero that works on projects across Florida, publishes guidance urging HOAs to understand what it calls the science behind pickleball noise before they approve a conversion. “The noise difference between pickleball and tennis isn’t subjective,” the company states. Pickleball generates roughly 70 decibels, the company says, compared with 40 to 45 decibels for tennis, a gap wide enough to explain why courts that sat quietly for years suddenly draw complaints once tennis lines get repainted for pickleball.
That decibel gap is at the center of nearly every dispute now working through Palm Beach County boardrooms and courtrooms. A tennis court that operated for decades without a single noise complaint can become the subject of a lawsuit within months of a pickleball conversion, purely on the strength of a different sound signature at a similar distance from nearby homes.
The scale of the sport’s growth explains why these fights keep multiplying. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association’s 2026 pickleball report puts national participation at 24.3 million players in 2025, up from 4.2 million in 2020, a jump of more than fivefold in five years. Roughly 4.5 million people picked up a paddle for the first time in 2025 alone, according to the same report. Every one of those new players needs somewhere to hit a ball, and in a built-out county like Palm Beach, that usually means converting an existing tennis or clay court rather than pouring a new one.
Many municipalities now write setback distances directly into court approvals for exactly this reason, with newer local rules commonly requiring pickleball courts to sit 150 to 500 feet from the closest home and, in some cases, mandating acoustic barriers before a permit is issued. Measured against that standard, Crescent Lakes’ original plan, with courts 10 feet from a resident’s property line, and Polo Trace’s existing courts, some within 100 feet of homes, sit far closer than what newer regulations elsewhere now require.
What It Means For Players Chasing A Court
For the millions of Americans who picked up a paddle in the past few years, these fights carry a direct cost: fewer courts, slower timelines, and HOA boards that now treat every conversion request as a potential legal and financial liability rather than a simple amenity upgrade. Crescent Lakes residents who wanted pickleball now have none. Polo Trace players who already use four courts face the prospect of losing all of them if the lawsuit against the community succeeds.
Boards elsewhere in the county are watching both outcomes closely. A successful recall at one community and active litigation at another give HOA attorneys and property managers two very different playbooks, and either result is likely to shape how the next community handles a pickleball conversion request before it ever reaches a vote. For players stuck waiting on a court that a board has paused pending legal advice, that means the fastest-growing sport in the country can still move at the speed of a homeowners association meeting.
Players who want to avoid a repeat of these fights in their own neighborhoods have a clear takeaway from both cases: acoustical studies, buffer distances, and resident input at the earliest stage of a court conversion now count for as much as the demand for courts itself.
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