The Town of LaSalle is looking to gage interest from residents over constructing permanent pickleball courts at the Vollmer Culture and Recreation Complex.
In the 2025 budget, the town set aside $3 million for potential pickleball courts, and administration was instructed to use up to 10 per cent of that to conduct a study and gather resident feedback.
Mayor Crystal Meloche says council wants to make sure they have support from residents before moving forward with any projects.
She said the Vollmer Culture is the best location to construct pickleball courts.
"We've looked at a lot of options throughout the municipality, but that is kind of our central location for our sports and activities," Meloche said.
"With this build, we would not only see, I believe it's twelve courts what they're looking at, but there'd be additional parking and there would also be washrooms and shade structures, so it's just kind of creating that whole atmosphere for sporting for people of all ages, and that's what the Vollmer Complex is meant to do."
She says residents have until Friday Mar. 27 to share their thoughts through the online survey platform PlaceSpeak.
"Anybody who doesn't want to use that platform does have the option of reaching out to members of council and sharing their thoughts, concerns, ideas, anything," Meloche said.
"We would like to hear from the public, especially for a project of this size. It is a very large investment in our community, but it's something that's available for people of all ages and all abilities, so we think it's really important to hear from the public, to make sure that we're making the right steps with this project."
Last summer, council voted in favour of converting two of the four tennis courts into dedicated pickleball courts at Front Road Park.
Meloche says they need to plan for the future.
"Knowing that, eventually, that part of the waterfront is going to be reconstructed," she said. "So we have to make sure that we do it in stages, so that we have new courts built somewhere else if they aren't going to necessarily stay at the waterfront, which at this time I don't know what the plan is, we haven't kind of got that far as the future planning of that project."
Administration will present a report back to council later this year with resident feedback for consideration.
The survey can be accessed here: https://www.placespeak.com/en/topic/23909-proposed-pickleball-courts-in-lasalle/#/overview.