Pickleballers want floor repairs at DI Rec Center, blame loose tiles

Daniel Island pickleball player Bonnie Hancock is a retired PE teacher, and she’s been inside plenty of gyms in her day.

She has valuable perspective when it comes to what she calls the loose plastic tiles of the floor at Daniel Island Recreation Center, where a sociable group of pickleball players meets every Tuesday and Thursday to play.  

“I have seen a ton of gym floors,” Hancock said as she sat on the bleachers Oct. 27 with other players, waiting her turn to get on the court. “This floor might not be the worst, but it’s right up there.”  

Members of the 20-strong pickleball group, which formed soon after the recreation center was completed in 2021, love the opportunity to play indoors so close to home. Friendly regulars welcome newcomers of all levels, and members often get together outside the gym. They appreciate the friendly staff and the price, just $3 per day to play.  

But for two years, they’ve been growing increasingly unhappy about floor tiles they say make it difficult to play on one of the gym’s two marked courts. The plastic tiles, made by a Salt Lake City, Utah, company called Sport Court, are also installed at the city’s Bees Landing Recreation Center in West Ashley. The molded tiles click together to form a floating surface on the concrete slab.  

A visit to the Daniel Island Recreation Center showed that some of those floor tiles are looser than others. When a pickleball hits a loose tile, it barely bounces. For pickleball players, it can make play nearly impossible. 

“It’s the worst pickleball surface anywhere in the area,” said Steve Cramer, a player who has lived on Daniel Island for 20 years and is taking the city to task on the condition of the floor.  

It’s not just pickleball. The impact of the bubbles is noticeable with basketball, too, said Charleston City Councilman Boyd Gregg, who represents District One, which includes Daniel Island and Cainhoy. Gregg, a civil engineer, met up with the pickleball players Oct. 1 at the recreation center to talk about the flooring.  

“You bounce a basketball in some of these spots, and the basketball dies,” said Gregg, who coached his daughter’s basketball team. “I certainly understand their frustration; it’s not an ideal playing surface for pickleball.”  

Cramer and Hancock have been corresponding with city officials since early last year about the condition of the floors. Cramer said he sent a video demonstrating how pickleballs perform when they hit the surface. A large group of players showed up to Charleston Mayor William Cogswell’s State of the City stop on Daniel Island on Oct. 20 hoping to make their concerns clear, but they learned there that they would have needed to submit any comments ahead of time.  

The city doesn’t intend to change the flooring, said Edmund Most, interim section chief for Charleston Department of Parks. Most, Charleston’s former deputy director of capital projects, said he has been closely involved in the recreation center’s construction. The flooring was chosen because it’s a softer surface than hardwood, which can help prevent injuries, he said.  

Most said the city inspected the flooring as part of a recreation center tour and didn’t identify defects with the flooring. According to Most, Interim Recreation Director Robin Cooper told him she hadn’t heard complaints about the floor from the basketball and volleyball players that use the space.  

“If we’re having competitive-level basketball tournaments out there, and volleyball out there, why isn’t it good enough for pickleball players who are really just trying to come out of the heat and play on that surface?” Most said. He noted that Bees Landing recently replaced its sports court flooring after 20 years of use and requested the same plastic tiles. 

The flooring was designed for multiple sports, but not pickleball, which surged in popularity after the $10 million project was designed, he added. Nobody who attended the Daniel Island Recreation Center design meetings mentioned pickleball, he said.  

“They were invited in and allowed to play pickleball inside that facility even though it wasn’t part of the programming when we designed it,” he said.  

Cramer, Hancock, and many of their fellow players disagree. The recreation center gym provides an important place to play in inclement weather, and it has also created a strong community group that is open to anyone who wants to join in. The city of Charleston doesn’t have any dedicated indoor pickleball courts. 

“Someone needs to take corrective action,” Cramer said. “We want them to take care of the floor, whether that means repair or replace, so it’s satisfactorily usable.”  

City councilman Gregg learned of the issue Oct. 1 and agreed with Cramer that the gym users should have a better floor at their disposal. But replacing the floor isn’t an option, he said after speaking to city officials. “This is just a floating floor, and unfortunately the floor is floating a little bit more than it’s supposed to.” 

The city is preparing to break ground on another recreation center, this one on Johns Island, due to open in 18 to 20 months. The gym there will have a rubber-and-synthetic surface made by the Italian company Mondo, Most said. As with the Daniel Island floor, the surface was chosen with safety and durability – not pickleball – as a priority.  

“It’s a really kind floor on your feet,” he said. “It, however, does not bounce a pickleball well. But it does bounce volleyballs and basketballs well.” 

Gregg said he would like to make sure the floor is fixed to the satisfaction of all who use it.  

“A near-term solution is to try and fix the bubbles in the floor,” he said. “I don’t know what the long-term solution is.”