On June 2, 2023, Fall River celebrated the opening of a new recreation center in the south end, featuring four permanent pickleball courts at Kennedy Park, with an option to expand to eight. The project, costing approximately $400,000, was highlighted as an investment in the community, supported by Community Development money and the City Council. Jim Crossen, a local pickleball advocate, spoke about the sport's popularity, noting 500 players currently at BCC and 90 daily players in Bristol, emphasizing the potential for open play and regional tournaments in Fall River. Future plans include additional courts at Britland and Kennedy Park, as well as clinics led by Jim Crossen to teach the basics of the game and facilitate organized play. Various city officials and community members were present, including Council Linda Pereira, Mike Dion from Government Center, Rodney from Stock Architects, Park Board Director Nancy Smith, and Park Board Chairman Joey de Silva. Mr. de Silva also mentioned other city improvements, such as brand new baseball lights funded by CPA at Maplewood Park. The overall goal articulated was to continue improving Fall River's parks, making them more family-friendly and showplaces for the community.
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so today in Fall River we're opening up another Recreation Center in the south end with four permanent pickleball courts and the option to expand it to eight um pickleball is extremely hot in the United States of America right now we're going to be going from here we're going to go by britland I believe they've already started painting the stripes on our pickleball courts there with the
0:20hope that those are done next week um this investment in Kennedy Park is good for the whole Community as you can see pickleball is in high demand so we'll see if we can put another quarter to somewhere else little tweaks we have to do to make sure we refine it so it's good for everybody I want to thank Jim Crossen who is the one that brought all these people here today telling them
0:40we're going to open it at 10 o'clock and of course I have a number of people to thank um obviously working closely with the city council on all of the projects in Fall River these are the kind of things they want to see they want to see permanent things that are going to go long past covered money or anything so people can enjoy them and we're joined today by Council Linda Pereira who's
1:00nice enough to come down to see what we got going uh many of the things we do in the city of Fall River especially in the Parks is uh spins around with Community Development money and one of the people I rely on in Government Center since the first day I was there probably till the last day I go was Mike Dion he's always he always pitches in to help on projects like this
1:23he monitors them and stock Architects obviously we work with Rodney on all these projects which is good for the city and it's good for the community um I would like uh I was what what promoted this quickly I want to introduce a gentleman who does a lot not even from the community but does a lot in the community about pickleball Jim Crossing to come up and then I'll let um one of the park Commissioners say something
1:53uh this is awesome this is one of the most beautiful quartz that we have around probably in the past like near 20 mile area um this is going to be great for the community it's a great place for everybody to play a good social environment and for everybody to get exercise um so we're hoping this all goes well and everybody enjoys playing here yeah sure um so as of right now where we are we
2:23play at BCC currently um we have a roster of about 500 people that play there currently so there's a lot of people that play there and surrounding areas uh we have Bristol and Bristol has up to 90 people that play a day um so they actually have to break into two sessions just to get everybody in there to play it so once this starts going um we should have pretty much did the
2:44same amount of people doing that same thing um there are really any form of leagues it's mostly open place so anybody that wants to play can come and play and uh the biggest thing is tournaments so everybody likes to have tournaments and we have those all around the areas and that's where the more competitive play comes into the show I think like Regional tournaments oh absolutely so anybody in the area
3:12um usually comes within a 30 mile radius to come and play in a tournament so uh that would be huge and uh even for community events but uh yeah that's uh very possible a problem I also want to introduce the park board our director is Nancy Smith she obviously is in control of what goes on on a daily basis on all of our Parks but our Park Commissioners are a Park Board
3:36obviously we're 100 behind projects like this in the Parks to make them more and I'd like one of them to come up and say if you would uh this is Joey de Silva I think he's the chairman of the park board how you doing I just saw I want to welcome everybody here in the Park Board is behind us all these improvements uh throughout this uh City we're doing a lot of improvements we just did the
3:57brand new baseball lights with CPA funding at Maplewood Park state of the uh baseball lights up there for that league and uh we're doing a lot of improvements and improving a lot of stuff and through the administration in the city council we thank them for doing the funding and we welcome everybody here and welcome to the community thank you uh Bob you want to say a few words okay
4:25anybody have any questions before you go back to work in the city and make sure you guys are you know get a story they're going right over there uh you can see the spot there's going to be two courts right on the crest of that little Hill um they're coming shortly we want them as fast as we can um they're planned to go right there that was an old sand court and it turned
4:49into something we didn't want so uh we're going forward with that we're going to have a net uh a fence put up between the courts I have to give Nancy Smith a do she said that the balls are going to run in from one Court to the other she was correct and we'll have those up I just talked to the Architects anybody have any questions for me Audrey
5:11well we have talked to um to Jim we were going to ask him to do a few clinics where he can come out he has a 12 paddles balls and he's going to teach people the basics of the game because they are also at the same time they're looking for certain hours where they can bring their 80 or 90 people here and have some little tournaments so we'll work with the park board to run some
5:34clinics at the same time give them some flexibility on a tournament or something or some regular play they want to use it for because they have so many people in fall river that want to play we want to try to make sure everyone has the opportunity any other questions that how much did we spend on this bike about four hundred thousand do you want to say a few words Mike okay yeah anybody have any other questions
6:03but you will see more improvements coming in the Parks we're looking at things every day to make them better more family friendly and that's our goal to make sure the parks are show places this this park looks great and we're going to keep improving it and thank you everybody for coming out today foreign