Parks director shares visitation data; resident renews request for dedicated pickleball courts

Parks and facilities staff gave the Hutchinson City Council a preview of a parks visitation report July 15 and a resident urged the city to add dedicated pickleball courts at the county fairgrounds.

Justin Combs, director of parks and facilities, said the city used Placer AI cell-phone data to measure park visitations and defined a “visit” as a person staying in a park seven minutes or longer. Combs said the top sites by visits in the most recent 12 months included Rice Park and Orchard Park, but that “obviously the number 1, probably everybody can guess is Cary Park… over the last full 12 months, there's been 730,600 visits to Cary Park.” He said he will present a fuller report to council showing comparisons with other Kansas parks.

Public comment: Don Bylor told the council that players and organizers are prepared to fund court conversion at the fairgrounds and urged the city to convert two tennis courts into four dedicated pickleball courts. “We have the money. We can do it. We're not talking a whole lot of money, but we do have it where we can turn those 2 courts into 4 dedicated pickleball courts,” Bylor said, adding that players lack evening locations and that local groups have pledged funds.

What’s next: Parks staff did not present a formal recommendation at the meeting. Combs said a full visitation report will be shared with council; council members asked staff to consider the request in the parks planning process and to report back when additional detail on sites, costs and scheduling is available.