Pickleball courts coming to west Salt Lake City, part of ever-growing investment to the west side

SALT LAKE CITY — Big improvements are coming to west Salt Lake City. Eight new pickleball courts were officially unveiled Thursday at Rosewood Park, something city officials said residents have been asking for, and more courts are coming.

Salt Lake City Public Lands will be adding an additional 12 to 16 courts at other parks along the west side.

“It feels like some of those historical issues that we’ve had about underinvestment or redlining, that the city is really taking us seriously,” Turner Bitton, chair of the Glendale Neighborhood Council, said.

These improvements are just small signs of growing investment on the west side of Salt Lake City.

In 2014, the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities began its plans to make improvements to a major part of the sanitary sewer system, which runs underneath Rosewood Park.

“Early in construction, our team that’s made up of not only Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities staff, but also our engineers and our construction staff, identified an opportunity to both do something really good for our community as well as save money on a $30 million capital improvement project. And that was to restore the Rosewood Park tennis courts,” Laura Briefer, director of public utilities, said.

Not just restore the tennis courts, but replace them with pickleball courts.

“We were able to go out to the community as part of a large construction project, ask our community what they wanted, deliver what our community wanted, and save money on our project,” Briefer said.

Bitton said many of his neighbors travel to the east side which has 14 courts, or other parts of the county to play pickleball.

“The courts are here on the west end (of Glendale Park) are kind (of a) mix of pickleball and tennis, which isn’t always great for those of us that are kind of obsessed with pickleball.”

Soon, the west side will account for two-thirds of the pickleball courts in Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City Public Lands is currently working on 30 projects on the west side. The Glendale Regional Park project, being one of them, was approved by voters back in 2022.

“People are just excited for a new amenity, a new park, all the new things that are coming with the park,” Bitton said.

Along with pickleball courts, the park is also getting new basketball courts, an all-abilities playground, picnic lawns, new parking, and more. Phase one of the project is expected to be complete by summer 2025.

“It’s viewed as a community gathering space, and there’s excitement around performances and all the different things that can happen at this new resource that we’re getting,” Bitton said. “Certainly, it’ll be something that benefits everyone citywide. But it took that city-wide investment and vision for green spaces for this to become a reality.”