West-side pickleball players and parents are peeved over the lack of a bathroom at a new $4.1 million playground, replete with four courts for the buzzy sport popular with venture capitalists.
The Stern Grove Playground opened last week to much fanfare, but pickleball patrons who have used the neighboring courts for about a year say they expected restrooms to be included. Instead, visitors must walk approximately half a mile to reach the nearest public restroom.
“It’s unbelievable incompetence,” said Carolyn Johnston of West Portal, who is in her 60s and plays pickleball several times a week. “A lot of pickleball players are elderly retirees. We need access to bathrooms, and we shouldn’t have to scramble around in the woods looking for a place to pee.”
While noting that the facility is new and well-maintained, Richmond resident and avid pickleball player May Chong, who is also in her 60s, says the uphill walk on the way back from the loos at the Stern Grove’s Trocadero House is inconvenient.
“It’s at least a 10-minute or more round trip to walk all the way down,” Chong said. “Downhill is quite easy, but when you have to go back uphill, it’s actually quite challenging.”
After noting that parents and children using the playground would need to make the same trek to reach restrooms, Chong said she often drives to Stonestown mall to use the bathroom before games.
Construction on what officials described as a “whimsical, nature-inspired retreat” began in August 2024. The playground is woodland-inspired, featuring tree-like towers, climbing nets, timber log features, and structures modeled after primitive treehouses.
It was the 12th of 13 city playgrounds renovated as part of Let’sPlaySF!, a public-private partnership funded through contributions from donors including the Hellman and Koret foundations, San Franciscans for Sports and Recreation, the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, and Jackie and Joby Pritzker, according to the Recreation and Parks Department.
Parks Department spokesperson Daniel Montes said a restroom had been considered for the playground, but it was “beyond the scope of the budget.” A new bathroom at Noe Valley Park was famously set to cost the city $1.7 million in 2024 before donors stepped up to foot a reduced cost. Montes said there are six public restrooms within a 10-minute walk: Trocadero Clubhouse, 20th and Wawona, Carl Larsen Park, Parkside Square, Pine Lake Park, and Sava Pool.
Johnston pointed out that construction workers at the site had portable toilets and complained that the city should do the same for parkgoers.
“They gave their workers porta-potties because they needed something, but then right before they did their beautiful grand opening, they got rid of them,” Johnston said. “So the people who are actually going to use the playground and court facility have nothing.”
Montes said the Parks Department is exploring options for lower-cost fixes to provide bathroom access at some park sites.
Parents, nannies, and tennis players visiting the week-old playground on Sloat Boulevard complained about the lack of restrooms.
“Most playgrounds in San Francisco that I’ve been to have a bathroom within a few feet of the playground,” said Meghan Stafford, who brought her daughter to the facility Friday. When her child needed to go, Stafford took her to a portable potty in their car rather than attempt the steep downhill walk to the nearest restroom.
Andrew Neuschatz, 63, who plays pickleball at the adjacent courts about once a week, hadn’t initially noticed the bathroom issue, since he lives five minutes away. But upon reflection, he said, a closer restroom should be provided.
“Even if it’s a 10-minute walk, that would be a 20-minute round trip, right?” Neuschatz said. “No kid ever says, ‘Oh, I need to go to the bathroom in 10 minutes.’ They need to go now.”
Benita Lew, who brought her three grandkids to the playground Friday, attempted to walk down to the clubhouse bathrooms but found the path blocked off.
“You can’t take a stroller down the way we were walking,” she said. “It started off as a nice path, and then it turned into dirt, brush.”
Tobias, a Bernal Heights resident visiting with his 3-year-old son, called the park “amazing” but said the Parks Department’s statement about nearby bathrooms was “clearly written by someone who doesn’t have a toddler.”
Vanessa, a 31-year-old nanny, was on her third visit to the playground this week and had only one complaint. “We could spend the whole day here, if you think about it,” she said. “But the bathroom, it’s what’s holding us back.”
It’s not just Stern Grove’s new park that pickleball players have issues with. Buena Vista Park’s bathrooms are often locked, multiple pickleballers told The Standard.
Chong believes drug use and criminal activity are to blame, though the Parks Department didn’t comment when asked. During Saturday visits, she has recoiled at seeing male pickleball players urinating in the brush.
“It’s kind of disgusting,” Chong said.
Kayla, a 23-year-old nanny visiting the playground for the first time, summed up the prevailing solution for those minding kids: “I’m not going to walk 10 minutes with them. They can go in nature.”