There will be four indoor courts and one outdoor court
A new padel centre is set to open in Tunbridge Wells which would have five courts, a clubhouse and terrace. A planning application has been submitted to Tunbridge Wells Borough Council for the facility for a sport whose popularity has been sweeping the country.
The centre would be at the leisure complex Knights Park in Knights Way, home to the Odeon Cinema, Hollywood Bowl, Laser Quest, and Nuffield Health Fitness and Wellbeing Centre. The padel site is next to Nuffield Health, and there would be four indoor courts, and one outdoor court with lighting, and a warm-up area, the plans by The Padel Club show.
The clubhouse would have a reception, toilets and showers, and a servery with seating, and an outdoor partially-covered terrace.
The site is at the southern end of the 834 space car park for the leisure facilities at Knights Park, which is accessed either from Knights Way via Longfield Road from the industrial estate or from the A21.
An initial proposal included two drive thrus, but these were removed following pre-application meetings with officers. Officers had also flagged lighting being major issues.
Access to the centre would make use of the existing route. Building the padel centre would create a loss of 144 parking spaces, but a transport survey found car parking demand at Knights Park “remains substantially below capacity”, said the application, with the maximum demand at peak periods being around 300.
Padel courts generate a maximum parking demand of around 21 spaces at any one time, said The Padel Club. Additional traffic is forecast to be 24 vehicle movements per hour – or one vehicle every two to three minutes, it said. It also said traffic modelling software showed the Knights Park/Knights Way priority junction operated “well within capacity” and would continue to do so.
As far as jobs are concerned, the application states there will be no employees. Opening hours would be Monday to Friday, 6am to 11pm; and Saturday, Sunday, Bank Holidays, 7am to 10pm.
The applicant listed five points about lighting including that the design would “minimise glare and light spillage” and “the means of lighting would be unobtrusively sited or well screened”.
The clubhouse would provide a social and community space which could be used for a “range of activities and events beyond sport”, said the applicant. It also said the the padel centre was a “natural extension” of the existing leisure destination at Knights Park.
“The addition of padel courts introduces a new and distinctive leisure activity that diversifies and strengthens the site’s role as a borough-wide leisure hub,” it said.
And in another part of the 36-page report, it says: “The proposed development will contribute to the borough’s range of formal recreational facilities, in accordance with Clause 5 of the policy. Padel is a rapidly growing sport in the UK, and the provision of dedicated courts will diversify the local leisure offer, encourage active lifestyles and promote community wellbeing.”
There were five objections from residents at the time of writing, with one common and prioritised theme being noise.
One said: “We are concerned about the noise impact of the proposed courts. The representativeness of the source noise data used in the noise assessment is questionable. More playing scenarios, including the worst case of having all courts occupied by players hitting the padels hard and strongly, need to be included in the assessment. Furthermore, the combined noise impact of spectators, users of other facility of the proposal, increased traffic flows and use of the car parks needs to be considered.”
There were also concerns which included higher traffic flows, lighting, and the risk of it becoming a gathering point in the social areas.
There are an estimated 30 million players around the world of padel, a game invented in Mexico in the 1960s. Players use a raquet with balls smaller than tennis balls, and serve underarm, on a court around a third smaller than one for tennis. The courts are enclosed, and like squash, the ball can be bounced off the walls. It’s sporty, sociable and addictive.
“Padel or padel tennis is a mix between tennis and squash. It’s a racquet sport for older and younger generations and people of all abilities – points are won by strategy and stealth more than just by sheer strength and power,” said The Padel Club.
“…….today (it is) considered one of the world’s fastest growing sports in Europe, particularly UK, South America and North America. Today, Spain is the dominant country with its more than 20,000 paddle courts and four million active players,” said the club.
As KentLive reported in October, there is another application for an indoor padel centre with six courts, at Chapman Way in Tunbridge Wells. This is from a company called Padel Hub and is not connected to the above application for Knights Park.
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