Vickie Taulbert and her husband, Mike, who are both in their 70s, have lived in their current northern Overland Park neighborhood for upwards of 40 years.
Originally attracted to the area — around 67th Street and Santa Fe, across the street from the green at Milburn Country Club — by its central location, they stayed for the community connection they forged with several neighbors who have also spent decades in the neighborhood.
“I mean really this street, it’s like a family,” Taulbert said, recounting memories of block parties and other gatherings. “On our street, we take care of everybody.”
But, recent construction on a new pickleball court in the side yard of the property that backs up to theirs — and concern about what that means for their quality of life — has Taulbert and her husband pondering a previously unthinkable move to a different neighborhood, potentially a different city altogether.
The pickleball court, Taulbert said, “it’s just in your face, and she thinks the large metal fence around it makes it look “like an MMA fighting cage.” She’s worried about the noise that people playing on the courts will make, too.
The sport is known to be loud, and disturbances from the game’s excess noise have kicked up some complaints across the county. And even the pickleball court in this Overland Park neighborhood, once completed, could potentially violate the city’s noise ordinances because the decibel levels of the game exceed noise levels allowed in residential areas of the city.
According to Johnson County land records, Cassy and Michael Wilson own the property in question. At the time of publication, Cassy Wilson, a real estate agent, had not returned the Post’s multiple requests for comment, including by phone, email and knocking on the front door of the property.
Pickleball courts are allowed in residential areas in Overland Park
The Taulberts aren’t the only ones worried about the pickleball courts and the noise they might bring to their neighborhood.
Several neighbors, particularly those living in proximity to the court, worry about the noise and its potential impact on their lives. One couple, who moved to the neighborhood just this year, feels the pickleball court is encroaching on their dream home.
They’re also worried the property will be used as a short-term rental like an Airbnb or VRBO because they say the new owner has a handful of properties used for that purpose in Johnson County already. That being said, the city has not received an application for a rental license on the property and is unaware of it being used as such at this point.
This dispute about a pickleball court built between two houses in northern Overland Park raises questions about what kind of sports courts are appropriate in residential areas and where. And, neighbors in this area are warning that this kind of issue can pop up in other neighborhoods as well, particularly in those without homeowner associations.
“For other neighborhoods, we’d just like people to know this can happen,” said Sheila Hammer, who also lives behind the house with the new court. “I think there needs some to be some very clear rules in place if this is going to become a thing.”
In Overland Park, property owners are allowed to put sports courts on their property “by right in single-family residential areas” — including for pickleball, basketball, tennis, etc. — provided they obtain the proper permits, said Meg Ralph, director of strategic communications for the city.
Sometimes HOAs impose stricter rules on what kinds of sports courts are permissible on a residential property in their jurisdiction. But some neighbors said they think the city is deferring too much to HOAs to police these sorts of issues. They say that might work in some areas, but not in neighborhoods that don’t have active HOAs or don’t have HOAs at all.
“I just wish Overland Park would be more strict on this because it just seems that they’ve missed the memo on this,” Taulbert said. “I mean something as large as that pickleball court, I mean it’s large, and it’s in your face.”
“A gigantic, tacky middle finger to the entire neighborhood”
Dana Wright, a local talk radio host, and her partner, Johnny Yakle, bought what Wright describes as their “dream home” near Milburn Country Club earlier this year after looking all over northern Johnson County for a home to share that matched their wishlist.
This historic home — a 115-year-old stone cottage with a detached coach house in the backyard, surrounded by beautiful gardens that attract all sorts of fauna — was everything they wanted. Plus, Yakle said, it’s “peaceful and private and quiet,” so for him, “it just couldn’t have been any more perfect.”
However, shortly after moving in earlier this year, they noticed construction taking place at the home to the north of theirs, which had also been recently sold after being in the same family for decades.
Wright said that while on her way to work one day, she saw Cassy Wilson, one of the new owners, out at the property and struck up a conversation. At the time, Wright says Wilson told her about plans to rent out the property and that they were putting in a circular drive to accommodate cars since street parking is not permitted in the area.
Wright said she didn’t hear anything about plans to put in a pickleball court in the side yard.
If they’d been upfront about it, Wright says she wouldn’t have necessarily loved the idea, but then she would have been willing to work with the new neighbors to find a way to keep everyone happy.
But instead, Wright sees it as “literally a gigantic, tacky middle finger to the entire neighborhood.”
Neighbors worry about the sound of pickleball
Taulbert and a handful of other neighbors all told the Post they’re worried about more than just the aesthetics of the thing, but that they are also concerned about having to hear the game being played all the time.
“We all know what the pickleball [game] sounds like, so I think it will just disturb what we have here,” Hammer said.
Pickleball can be loud, registering sound peaks of up to 85 decibels, compared to the 60 decibels or lower usually recorded during games of tennis, according to the LA Times. (Basketball, another common type of sports court built in residential areas, registers sound levels around 45 decibels.)
The noise of pickleball has been a hot topic as of late in Johnson County as the game has become increasingly popular. In 2022, a Johnson County mayor and his wife sued Mission Hills Country Club over pickleball noise, saying it was causing “emotional distress.” Additionally, some cities have looked at regulating the sound from the game, particularly with an eye toward private courts in residential areas.
Overland Park has a noise ordinance, adopted more than 20 years ago, that places limits on sound levels (as measured on a decibel meter) at specific times of the day. From 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in residential areas, the limit is 60 decibels, and from 10 p.m. until 7 p.m. — during designated quiet hours — the limit is lowered to 55 decibels.
Since pickleball can register sound levels as high as 85 decibels, the playing of the game in residential areas is essentially never allowed in Overland Park residential areas because it would create what city ordinances describe as a “noise disturbance.”
Still, the court was allowed, something Wright and Yakle find absurd, since using it as intended would only violate the noise ordinance.
The couple and some other neighbors have all purchased decibel meters to monitor noise, intending to report excess sound levels to the non-emergency police line. That’s because city officials have told them their only recourse is to enforce the noise ordinance.
In an email obtained by the Post, Current Planning Manager Brian Monberg told Wright that “violations to our codes that create a disturbance or nuisance will be vigorously enforced.”
But Yakel still feels like that’s putting neighbors in a tough spot.
“It’s cities forcing us to be the bad folks in this deal, if we have to call every single time, and I don’t want to have to call every single time,” he said.
Beyond setting decibel limits, city code also says it’s “unlawful for any Property Owner or Tenant … to allow or permit a person or group of persons to create a Noise Disturbance.” It instructs that individuals responsible for it will be “responsible for abatement” or be found in violation, and it imposes fines that increase with every violation.
(Overland Park also has a nuisance party ordinance, which was written with short-term rental properties in mind after a fatal shooting at one such property a few years ago, that sets up fines for social gatherings of five or more people that lead to criminal violations.)
Councilmember sees pickleball dispute as a tough “balance”
Council President Holly Grummert, who is one of the councilmembers who represent this part of the city on the Overland Park City Council, said she’s heard from some neighbors about their concerns with the side-yard pickleball court and has herself driven by the property.
And while she said she’s sympathetic to some of those worries, she pointed out that city code allows it, just like it allows basketball and tennis courts.
“They did everything legally,” she said of the property owner who had the court built. “They got permits, and they followed the city’s code.”
Grummert said she sees it as a “balance” that needs to be struck — owners have a right to do what they want on their property so long as it follows city codes, but neighbors also have a reasonable expectation of peace on their own properties.
“We look at those issues pretty regularly and are updating as needed,” she said. “I mean, at the end of the day, we have to think about how we can be good neighbors, but also making sure that people have their own property rights on their property.”
Grummert said she isn’t aware at this time of any plans to specifically review ordinances that might touch on this issue in particular — like the noise ordinance, the party ordinance or land use rules in residential areas — but she does think the ongoing effort to overhaul the city’s entire set of development codes might touch on it.
One couple paid $6,500 to block out the pickleball court
Players in a weekly competitive pickleball league at Lake Quivira Country Club, Wright and Yakle are lovers of the sport, but feel like there’s an appropriate spot for the game, and it’s not that close to their home.
“It’s actually so absurd, it would be comical if we weren’t so mad about it,” Wright said.
In the end, they decided the best option would be to block the new pickleball court out as best they could. So, shortly after they figured out what was happening next door, they hired someone to install an 8-foot-tall, wooden privacy fence on their northern property line.
It cost them $6,500, and Wright said they had some hurdles to get over at the city level to get it approved.
“The only positive thing that’s come about is that we’ve met now all of our neighbors, because everyone’s so mad about it, everyone’s sort of like banding together,” Wright said.
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