City officials are beginning to explore whether to put pickleball and sand volleyball courts into Encinitas Community Park, instead of the originally planned aquatic complex and teen center. On Wednesday, the City Council voted 4-0, with Councilmember Kellie Hinze absent, to direct city staff to come up with cost estimates for collecting public comment on the new options. As they explained why they now are considering changing the park plans, council members said the cost of constructing an aquatic center likely is massive and the site that was set aside for it might be too small. “The better part of valor maybe might be to not do the aquatic center,” Councilmember Bruce Ehlers said. Mayor Tony Kranz said it’s not just the construction costs that are an issue; the facility would be expensive to operate on a yearly basis. Located on Santa Fe Drive just west of Interstate 5, Encinitas Community Park is a sprawling 44-acre property that opened as a city park in 2015. It contains a “world class skatepark,” a hugely popular playground, a dog park that’s “perhaps the nicest in the region,” and multi-use sports fields, city parks operations manager David Norgard told the council Wednesday. The city financed the park’s initial construction with bond money, and as a cost-saving measure, neither the swim complex nor the teen center proposals were included in the first construction phase. Plans for the teen center have called for a 5,000-square-foot structure in the park’s northwest corner, while the swim complex has been proposed for the northeast area where the Cardiff Dog Days of Summer festival has recently been held. Plans for it call for a bath house building plus two pools, one for recreation swimmers and one for lap swim and competition events. A new study produced by a city-hired consulting company has determined that it is possible to shift the plans to pickleball and volleyball courts. In order to pursue these new options, the city will need to rework the park’s major use permit and its accompanying environmental impact report, consultants RRM Design Group reported. That process is likely to cost $350,000 to $500,000, Norgard told the council Wednesday. That does not include the money that would be needed to construct the courts. RRM Design Group proposed three construction options: Option 1 proposed two sand volleyball courts on the teen center site, Option 2 proposed the two sand volleyball courts at the teen center site and up to 12 pickleball courts on the aquatic center site, and Option 3 proposed leaving the teen center site as it is now and putting 4 volleyball courts and eight pickleball courts on the aquatic center site. Council members decided to direct city employees to draw up cost estimates for doing the public outreach required to revise the planning documents. They also asked for more information about the city’s current pickleball needs and the size of swim complexes in neighboring communities. Ehlers said he knows that pickleball is rapidly growing in popularly and the city might want to consider adding courts to its other parks. Played with paddles and somewhat resembling tennis, pickleball was invented in the 1960s in Washington state, but didn’t start exploding in popularity until the 2000s, the USA Pickleball web site states. In 2023, there were an estimated 8.9 million players over the age of 6, it continues. Encinitas currently does not have any courts dedicated solely to pickleball use at its city parks, thought it does have places where pickleball is allowed part of the time, Norgard said. In other action Wednesday, the council asked city employees to come up with cost estimates for doing an assessment of the town’s historic structures, with an eye toward creating city historic districts — areas that contain multiple noteworthy buildings. Councilmembers Allison Blackwell and Joy Lyndes brought forward the idea. They said they envision a system where participation would be voluntary, properties would benefit from tax breaks and the historic districts would benefit from publicity about their special status. Parts of the city’s coastal corridor and the Olivenhain region were mentioned as possible district areas.