After fed-up neighbors file suit, Upper Main Line YMCA pauses pickleball, ‘explores options’

The outdoor courts are padlocked and the nets are down but the racket over pickleball at the Upper Main Line Y (UMLY) is far from over.

After two years of back-and-forth with UMLY and Easttown officials that cut the hours of play but failed to quell the din to their satisfaction, neighbors decided to play hardball – they sued.

Standing firmly in their corner: local land-use attorney Phil Rosenzweig, who’s made a career out of crusades for the little guy.

Among his local skirmishes, Rosenzweig championed neighbors’ fights over stadium lights at Lower Merion High School, bulldozers at historic Oakwell in Villanova, and the development of Willistown’s Rockhill Farm. When he was a Lower Merion Commissioner, he wrote the resolution that banished the threat of eminent domain for private gain in Ardmore.

These days, he’s a field general in the pickleball wars. The UMLY lawsuit is his 12^th pickleball action.

“I’m really charged up about this because it’s just not right,” Rosenzweig tells SAVVY. “Just because pickle is a hot sport, it doesn’t mean that should take precedence over the quality of life for residential neighbors. Businesses and governments are rushing to find spots to put this stuff. This is literally about whether people have the ability to live peacefully in their homes. Why should any taxpaying citizen be subject to conditions that make it impossible to live there? It’s just offensive.”

On April 22, he filed a 44-page lawsuit against UMLY and Easttown Township on behalf of four Paoli households neighboring UMLY’s Racquet Sports Complex on Ashby Road and Longcourse Lane. The suit seeks unspecified damages and the closure of the courts.

On May 16, three weeks after papers were served, the Y closed its outdoor courts until further notice, sending players scrambling just as the season was heating up.

Among other charges, the suit alleges the Y’s 2022 conversion of clay tennis courts to 12 hard-surfaced pickleball courts was not “simply trading one racquet sport for another” but was a “substantive, massive change” that violated township zoning code and noise ordinances.

The suit claims homeowners’ have suffered “irreparable harm” – with their physical and mental health threatened, their daily lives disrupted, and their right to enjoy peace and quiet in their own homes and yards denied.

Also alleged: the township turned a blind eye to ongoing infractions and conspired with the Y to protect pickleball, “synching narratives” and encouraging the Y to have pickleball players speak at supervisors meetings.

The suit also states that two Easttown supervisors have conflicts of interest: Board chair Erik Unger, for his work on UMLY’s Mission Advance Committee, and Susan LeBoutillier, who has played pickle at UMLY.

“The alleged conflict is from my 2017-2018 volunteer fundraising activity at UMLY so that low-income families could attend camp/childcare there,” Unger tells SAVVY. Unger was not present at the April board meeting during which the township passed an ordinance regulating future pickleball courts while LeBoutillier was the lone nay vote.

As expected, the township’s attorney, Steven Rhoads, declined to comment on pending litigation. To date, the Y has made one public statement:

“At the YMCA of Greater Brandywine we strive to be good neighbors and thoughtful stewards of our shared community. We are currently facing civil litigation related to the alleged violations of local noise ordinances from pickleball activities on the premises. We take these matters very seriously. Outdoor pickleball courts at our Upper Main Line YMCA will be closed temporarily while we gather information and explore options.”

On the advice of counsel, the aggrieved neighbors aren’t talking either.

But area pickleball players aren’t pulling punches.

“We had a wonderful caring community of pickleball players at the Y that the neighbors blew up with their mean-spirited lawsuit,” player Cathy Rubenstone tells SAVVY. “We are devastated that the Y closed the courts forcing us all to different venues to play.”

On Facebook, former UMLY pickleball instructor Jennifer Land called the courts’ closure “a tragedy, especially for the hundreds of seniors who enjoyed playing there during the day. Pickleball reduces loneliness and isolation, builds friendships and provides an age-inclusive form of exercise… There are other options here like reducing court time or limiting the numbers of days the courts are open. But for neighbors to demand eliminate it entirely? Because four neighbors filed a lawsuit? Just wow.”

Easttown isn’t the only Main Line municipality under fire over pickleball.

Rosenzweig is also suing Haverford Township over its courts at Paddock Park, claiming the pop-pop-pops have so degraded four neighbors’ quality of life and home values that the township has, in effect, taken their property by “inverse” condemnation.

“My clients can’t use the outdoor of their houses at all, and they can’t even crack a window for air because the noise is just that intense. We’re saying you have taken the value of our property so you’re going to pay us for that value.”

In Bryn Mawr, Rosenzweig is also talking with increasingly vexed neighbors of the new pickleball courts at Ashbridge Memorial Park after a failed effort to stop Lower Merion from installing the courts.

At Valley Forge Military Academy & College, Dink City Pickleball was ordered to close on a zoning technicality. Tredyffrin cited the infraction only after Radnor neighbors complained about loud music at the outdoor complex. Those courts are now operated by VFMAC.

Interesting, Tredyffrin Supervisors recently voted – with the local civic association’s blessing – to seize a developer’s land to open a tennis-and-pickleball pocket park in the densest neighborhood in Chesterbrook. We’ll see how that plays out.

Amid so much strife, a growing chorus contends that pickleball – with its uniquely grating, irregular “impulse” pops – should only be played indoors.

Rosenzweig points to The Pickler, a nationwide chain of indoor club franchises soon to open in Broomall Commons and the Whiteland Town Center in Exton.

“They take shopping center spaces that have gone out of business and turn them into indoor pickleball courts. Good freakin’ idea.”