Orange Beach is looking to join South Baldwin cities Gulf Shores and Foley by adding outdoor pickleball courts to take advantage of what has been called the fastest-growing sport in the country.

“If everything goes well, we’re going to put them over just north of the aquatic center where the community garden used to be which was revamped and moved over,” Parks and Recreation Director Nicole Ard said. “We’ve got to plan a little bit to try to not only do the pickleball courts but maybe even improve the traffic flow around that recreation complex and add a more dedicated parking area.”

Gulf Shores added 12 lighted pickleball courts at the city’s Sportsplex and Foley is adding outdoor courts north of the Coastal Alabama Farmers and Fishermen’s Market. The weekend of Aug. 23-26 the Foley Events Center near the OWA complex was home to USA Pickleball Gulf Coast Select Series tournament.

Ard says Orange Beach has room to add 14 courts and lighting is included in the plan.

“We’ll have 14 and you really need 12, basically, to be able to do different types of activities if we ever wanted to do tournaments where 12 is usually the magic number,” Ard said. “When we were looking at the space, we have the ability to add a couple more and a little building with a little restroom, some shade and some vending and things like that. We wanted to go ahead and maximize the space. It'll actually be, to my knowledge, the biggest pickleball complex in the area.”

The hope is to use longer-lasting and lower-energy LED bulbs at the complex.

“They’ll be lighted and this will all come down to funding and budgets, but in the plans we are hoping to do some type of LED which is really good because they only shine down on the court so they don’t affect the neighbors,” Ard said. “It won’t bleed over and be too bright.”

The first step toward that goal is getting the restroom building designed and bid out. There was a brief discussion at a recent council meeting work session to hire McCollough Architecture for $14,000 for design services for a pickleball bathroom building. The entire facility is 980 square feet with a 784-square-foot covered porch with a total cost of about $450,000.

“It’s a simple little building but we definitely know that these folks need some shade and some areas because it’s hot out on the court,” Ard said. “We want to make it comfortable for them. A lot of local courts don’t have that. We tried to build that into our plans and hopefully, it’ll work out with our budget and everything else.”

Currently, the city uses one of the gyms at the recreation center where there is room to have three courts temporarily in use when the space is available.

“Gymnasium space is kind of at a premium regardless,” Ard said. “The scheduling can sometimes be very difficult to manage and, of course, summer camp and everything else, so it’s tough.”

The new courts would be available for players at any time.

“My idea is to have them just like they are in other areas, just open and accessible to anyone to just walk up and play,” Ard said. “We’re in the early stages, so we don’t know what it will actually be.”

Ard said the project is in the planning stages, so it is hard to put a price tag on it or a timetable for starting and finishing the project.