(Updated at 2:20 p.m. on 6/4/2023) Pickleball players at McLean’s Lewinsville Park will soon no longer have to contend with wind gusts.
The Fairfax County Park Authority Board approved a $2,382 grant during its May 24 meeting to support the installation of black privacy slats on the fencing around the park’s dedicated pickleball courts at 1659 Chain Bridge Road.
“The increasing popularity of pickleball has been driving high demand for the athletic courts at Lewinsville Park,” the park authority said in a news release. “However, wind often interferes with play and hinders player performance and safety.”
The four courts opened last October as part of a $650,000 renovation that resurfaced all of the park’s tennis and basketball courts. One of the six existing tennis courts was converted into pickleball-only facilities, and another was restriped to support both sports.
Since then, “hundreds of players” have been utilizing the courts throughout the year, and demand “is expected to grow rapidly,” according to Baroody Camps, an organization that provides school and summer enrichment camps and programs.
Baroody works with the park authority to provide recreational programming, including pickleball. The lack of wind screens for the Lewinsville pickleball courts has become a frequent issue for players, the company said in its Mastenbrook grant application to the FCPA.
“Wind impacts all players at every skill level, undermining players’ ability to place and return the ball and in some cases forcing players to rapidly shift running direction to reach the ball in play, creating a safety hazard,” Baroody founder and owner Peter Baroody wrote.
In addition to “slowing the crosswinds that occur at the site,” the slats could also potentially “aid in noise reduction,” Baroody told FFXnow.
With the project carrying an estimated cost of $4,764, Baroody will match the approved grant funds and take full responsibility for maintaining the slats, though it says the equipment provider, Long Fence, describes its windscreen “as virtually maintenance-free.”
According to FCPA staff, the project will add 230 linear feet of 9-foot-high slats on the existing pickleball court fencing along the 120-foot sideline and along 110 feet of endline.
The installation is expected to be completed this summer.
Photo courtesy Fairfax County Park Authority/Flickr
The Fairfax County Park Authority will celebrate the importance of protecting the night sky on Saturday, Nov. 12.
The free event, which takes place in McLean at Lewinsville Park from 6:30-8:30 pm, will feature live demonstrations, hands-on activities, and opportunities for the public to learn how to fight light pollution.
Tammy Schwab, project manager, tells FFXnow that there will be stations for people to learn about artificial light’s effect on plants, animals, and people. If the weather permits, there will be telescopes and binoculars to view constellations.
“We will also have information about the small actions folks can take to help reverse light pollution in their neighborhood.”
Schwab said it’s essential to educate the public on light pollution because it causes harm to animals and plants that are adapted to dark nights.
“This artificial light at night, especially those with high color temperatures like bright white and blue, have been shown to cause harm in humans as well by interrupting our circadian rhythms. Additionally, light pollution is a waste of energy,” Schwab said, adding that unlike other forms of pollution, humans can easily reverse light pollution with a switch.
The park authority is partnering with the McLean Citizens Association, the Analemma Society, and Dark Sky Friends. Registration is encouraged but not required.
Photo via Mindaugas Vitkus/Unsplash
Now that Holladay Field’s conversion to synthetic turf is complete, McLean Youth Soccer (MYS) has set its sights on a new project to bolster the area’s recreational amenities.
The nonprofit soccer club is collaborating with the Fairfax County Park Authority on plans to build a new, permanent restroom facility for Lewinsville Park, which currently only has port-a-potties.
“Lewinsville Park…offers a lot of parks, tennis courts, baseball fields, community garden, but it didn’t have those restrooms,” MYS Board Chair Susan Mrachek told FFXnow. “…For sanitary reasons, whether it’s changing a baby’s diaper or being able to wash your hands or even seeking shelter, we felt it was really important not just for McLean Youth Soccer players, but for the community at large.”
Encompassing 37.7 acres at 1659 Chain Bridge Road, Lewinsville Park is heavily used by everyone from tennis players and nearby McLean High School students to local sports teams like McLean Youth Soccer, which has approximately 2,800 players aged 4 to 22. It also hosts the annual McLean Day festival, which drew roughly 8,400 people this year.
However, the park has no running water and just three to four portable toilets by the parking lot to serve all those people, Mrachek says.
The permanent restroom project came out of discussions among MYS board and staff members after they celebrated the opening of the renovated Holladay Field last fall.
“We thought, ‘Okay, what’s the next thing that we could improve upon?'” Mrachek said. “And [Executive Director Louise Waxler] talked about the restrooms. We all felt that pain as we watched our kids playing soccer and having to go to a port-a-potty.”
The organization pitched the idea to the county park authority, which will introduce the project to the community with a virtual meeting at 7 p.m. next Thursday (June 16).
The proposed facility will be approximately 1,000 square feet in size, though the exact number of stalls or individuals it could accommodate won’t be clear until it reaches the design phase, according to FCPA spokesperson Judy Pederson.
The current estimated project cost is $670,000, but MYS has proposed funding all but $20,000, Pederson says.
According to the project page, the facility could be completed in late 2023, but Mrachek says a thorough review is still needed to see what will be required from an engineering standpoint.
Lewinsville Park is far from the only outdoor recreational facility in Fairfax County without bathrooms of its own.
According to Pederson, 24 of the park authority’s 46 “larger” parks lack a permanent restroom structure, though some like McLean Central Park have access to nearby public buildings. Just 10 out of 34 district parks have a restroom facility listed in the FCPA Park Register.
The deficit also extends to outdoor athletic facilities at more than half of Fairfax County’s high schools, an issue that the county and public school system are moving to address.
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McLean Tennis Court Project Approved — The Fairfax County Park Authority Board “approved $650,000 in funding for court improvements at Lewinsville Park in McLean…FCPA anticipates the courts to be closed for up to four months, while these renovations and repairs are made.” [FCPA]
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The Fairfax County Park Authority is seeking $650,000 to renovate the aging tennis courts at Lewinsville Park in McLean.
The proposed project will restore the surfacing and fencing at all six existing courts at the park, and one of the courts will be converted into four dedicated pickleball courts.
“The Park Authority Board, working closely with Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust, has endeavored to move this project forward quickly to address the growing interest in pickleball locally and countywide,” the FCPA said in a news release on Friday (April 22).
The recommended project is slightly scaled down from the three options that the park authority presented to the community at a meeting in December.
Staff’s suggestions then were to repurpose between two and three courts for pickleball use, either exclusively or as a shared-use with tennis. Many tennis proponents in the meeting argued that the county’s available facilities are too limited to share that many courts with pickleball players.
A countywide pickleball study finalized last year concluded that pickleball has grown in popularity locally, mirroring national trends, but Fairfax County trails other similarly sized jurisdictions in terms of the availability of facilities dedicated to the sport, leading to conflicts with tennis and other recreational activities.
The county opened its first pickleball-only courts at Wakefield Park in Annandale in November, though it has about 50 outdoor tennis courts that have also been outfitted for pickleball.
In addition to adding another dedicated pickleball facility, the Lewinsville project will bring much-needed repairs to the park on Chain Bridge Road. The existing courts remain busy despite cracked surfaces that tennis players say render them almost unusable.
The pickleball study confirmed that use of all of the county’s outdoor courts has climbed during the pandemic.
The Park Authority board will consider the Lewinsville project during a planning and development committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. on May 11. If the committee advances the proposal, the full board will vote on whether to approve the project and the requested funding at 7:30 p.m. that day.
The FCPA says the estimated $650,000 cost of the project would be covered by “a variety of sources,” including approved park bonds.
Public comments on the project will be accepted through parkmail@fairfaxcounty.gov until May 10.
