I probably won’t be able to say this on May 6, at the first of two meetings scheduled to discuss the proposed tennis and pickleball center at Joe Creason Park in Louisville, so I’ll say it today. These are my opinions, and do not reflect those of my contract employers.
I believe that the Metro Louisville Mayor’s Office has done a great disservice to this community, and particularly to the residents of District 10, by negotiating and executing a Letter of Intent for the development project at Joe Creason Park.
I believe that the signing of the Letter of Intent by Mayor Craig Greenberg on March 10, 2025, committing Louisville Metro Government to negotiating a development agreement with a private developer to construct 36 new tennis courts and 18 pickleball courts, a pro shop, physical therapy center, locker rooms and a restaurant, consuming 25 acres of the 62.15 acres of Joe Creason Park, was in violation of legal obligations imposed by the Kentucky Constitution on granting franchises or privileges.
I believe that the signing of the Letter of Intent by the Mayor is an insult to those who use, enjoy, and cherish Joe Creason Park as a multi-use community park, and to homeowners and renters who live in the neighborhoods that surround the park.
The signing of the Letter of Intent by the Mayor is dismissive of the park planning process and has compromised the planning process as well by committing Metro Louisville Government to supporting the project at that location.
And I believe the signing of the Letter of Intent is disrespectful of the rights and interests of residents who use, enjoy, honor, and cherish a beloved neighborhood park who are now left wondering why their thoughts, their concerns, their needs, and their interests matter so little that the Mayor’s Office would negotiate a Letter of Intent that would upend their quality of life, burden their neighborhoods with increased traffic and noise, and consume almost half of their community park, without having come to them FIRST to ask whether they supported such a dramatic development rather than treating them as an afterthought.
Mr. Mayor, coming from a development background, you may not be aware that real, meaningful, public involvement in governmental decisions on development projects is not just some box on an application to be checked in the process of pushing forward an outsized development wholly inappropriate for a community park. Park master plans are not meant to be sidestepped or ignored when someone comes along with the next “big” idea to put Louisville on the national tennis map that just happens to rely on occupying almost half a community park in order to make the ledger work. The beloved public parks of this city, including Joe Creason Park, are not just “property” ripe for development without regard for what the neighborhoods, district, and community need and want.
And the belated and cabined “engagement” public role the Letter of Intent creates for the affected neighborhoods and Creason Park users, is wholly inadequate and much too little and too late in the process.
Community-based planning involves the public in each aspect of the identification of community goals and needs, and invites timely and early public input when a third-party proposal that was not the product of community planning is made that would affect that plan.
Yet in this case, the Greenberg Administration did not invite public discussion of a merits and suitability of a third-party proposal to construct a massive tennis/pickleball sports complex consuming 25 of the 62.15 acres of Joe Creason Park.
The Administration did not ask the public in the neighborhoods of Metro Louisville whether the City should loan $20 million dollars towards the proposed project at a time when the basic recreation needs of many neighborhood children, families, and seniors (which according to planning assessments don’t include more tennis or pickleball courts) are going unbudgeted and unmet.
Instead, the Greenberg Administration entered into negotiations with the developer, with NO advance public notice or NO advance community outreach or public input of which I am aware, resulting in a March 2025 Letter of Intent committing Metro Louisville Government to move forward to negotiate a development agreement with a private developer to lease 25 acres of Joe Creason Park for an outsized tennis and pickleball development, complete with a restaurant, pro shop, paved outdoor courts, paved parking area, and to seek $20 million of public monies to loan the development.
This limited, after-the-fact involvement of the public under the Letter of Intent doesn’t ask WHETHER the public believes that so much of this open-space community park should be consumed by a tennis and pickleball sports complex. It doesn’t ask WHETHER the concept, which was not the result of any community-based land use or park planning, and is not designed to serve any unmet recreational need for the community served by this community park, SHOULD be pursued or entertained at all by Metro Government, or at another location more appropriate to the mass and scale of the proposal. It doesn’t ask whether the neighborhoods surrounding Joe Creason Park SUPPORT Metro Government negotiating the loss of other uses for almost half of the park, because a third-party would like to construct 36 new tennis courts and 18 pickleball courts, a pro shop, physical therapy, locker rooms and a restaurant, on 25 acres of their 62-acre community park.
Instead, the Letter of Intent called for a public engagement plan to be developed AFTER the Letter of Intent was already drafted and signed. The first public meetings are occurring on May 6 and 10, weeks AFTER the Letter of Intent was already signed, and months after discussions and negotiations began, yet before the “detailed operations plan” has even been made public.
And what public input is being sought? It is only public input in order to “refine” the preliminary development plan that has been reviewed internally by the Greenberg Administration, but to date has not been made public.
The disrespectful and dismissive manner in which the public have been treated by the Greenberg Administration’s negotiation and execution of the Letter of Intent does not bode well for this development project, nor should it for a proposal that early public input would have informed the Mayor and his agencies to be wholly inappropriate in scope for a community park, and not needed to serve unmet identified recreational needs for the neighborhoods surrounding Creason Park.
The Greenberg Administration could salvage a little good will from a community made more cynical by being treated as an afterthought, if it were to withdraw from the Letter of Intent and work with the developers to find a location more appropriate for a project of this scale than a community park surrounded by residential neighborhoods, a state nature preserve, a nature center, and which was purchased with federal money on a pledge to provide permanent open-space park use.
