Game Over: no outdoor basketball for Wesbrook Place.

Canadians cheered when the Raptors won the NBA title. People piled into cars and had impromptu parades from Halifax to Vancouver. Team jerseys were even popping up on residents in UBC’s urban housing developments. Celebrating a professional basketball team based in Toronto doesn’t, however, easily translate into supporting basketball facilities on the ground at UBC. 

 

Almost two decades ago an outdoor half court proposed for the Old Barn Community Centre was unceremoniously dumped by UBC’s land development company.  It took a youth campaign to get a ‘temporary court built away from residents squeezed between an electrical substation and a busy arterial road.  In the middle of the pandemic UBC quietly made plans to replace it with a hydrogen gas station. A community outcry ended in the court being preserved and (again temporarily) placed in a parking lot a short distance from the original location.  

Somewhere through this process people in the University Neighbours Association (UBC’s managed agency that acts as the local advisory council) saw that there was a community interest and desire for additional outdoor sports facilities. Metro Vancouver, the regional planning/infrastructure authority, had a time limited funding to support such community amenities. A decision was made to get the ball rolling (bouncing?). The way this works is that the UNA then requested UBC Properties Trust (UBC’s land development company) create a design and submit a development permit to UBC’s own planning process. Once the permit was approved, the UNA and UBCPT would apply to Metro Vancouver for funding and, assuming success with the funding application build the new (again temporary) outdoor basketball court. It did not go as planned or expected.

 

Almost the minute a development permit sign went up on the vacant lot in the middle of Wesbrook Place opposition began to ferment. An anonymous facebook page popped up outlining the problems with the plan (and basketball in general). An assistant dean put up a detailed personal webpage called Webber Guardians and started an online petition against the basketball court. Late 2021 victory was declared when, on the eve of an election, the UNA Directors voted to cancel the basketball court.

 

But the story doesn’t end there. Once the UNA election was over a new board (which included four re-elected Directors, the majority of the seven person board) made plans to restart the outdoor basketball court, but this time taking into account the ten people who signed the petition and the three delegates who came to the December UNA board meeting.  The primary complaints were about noise, but also about the type of people and problems these people would bring to an attractant like an outdoor basketball court. In redesigning the court, the UBCPT team conducted a noise survey to test the extent to which an outdoor court would exceed the UNA Noise Bylaw standards (the court would have complied with the noise bylaw). They also worked in berms to deflect potential sound disturbances and shifted the siting of the court further away from the building where residents seemed most concerned.  

 

A new campaign against the court quickly re-emerged within buildings close to the proposed site in which three key issues were identified: noise, lack of aesthetic appeal, and disruption caused by people attracted to the court.  UBC Campus and Community Planning held a public consultation that included virtual open houses and an online survey. They received 203 responses to the survey (which is a lot compared to typical responses). 132 opposed the court, 71 spoke in favour.   Campus Planning staff recommended approval of the plan to UBC’s Development Permit Board, May 10, 2022. The planning board decided to defer approval and laid out conditions to be met prior to full approval, conditions that in my opinion essentially made the project null and void.  The UNA board, reviewed their options and decided to formally withdraw their application thereby ending the Wesbrook Place basketball saga.

After all this transpired, I was curious as to what motivated those opposed to the basketball court. The UNA executive officer noted that those opposed to the court expressed some very intemperate comments. During the permit board meeting “inflammatory statements [were] posted in the meeting chat, including comments about there “being a war” if the proposed project was passed.”  One respondent called the UNA board of directors corrupt and without decency: “Have you no decency? Wow too bad there wasn’t 2 other BB COURTS right beside the proposed site!!!!!!?????? This is a mistake beyond comprehension, I know greedy people who don’t live near here want this, but you are going to directly hinder daily life to probably 100 people who live directly adjacent. Oh well! Disgusting. …A corrupt board that decides.” 

 

The UNA’s executive officer noted that “the type of opposition displayed in relation to this project exceeds anything that I witnessed in my numerous years working in local government. From community members contacting consultants directly, to inflammatory and personal comments routinely posted in public consultation forums, to opaque threats of future legal action – the type of opposition truly pushed the boundaries of acceptability.” For whatever reason the opposition to the court was both insistent and, at times, quite aggressively insistent. 

 

After news that that Development Permit Board had deferred the application and the UNA had withdrawn their permit application, I tried to learn just what people had said in support or opposition to the courts. Aside from summary documents available via the UNA there was no way to access the full set of materials that the Development Permit Board used to come to their decision.  I asked to view a recording of the permit board meeting but was denied. I asked for correspondence on the subject but was denied due to privacy concerns. I asked to view the consultation survey responses and offered to do so in the office of Campus and Community Planning, this was allowed. 

 

I was greeted by a campus and community planning staffer when I arrived to view the consultation survey. They reviewed the process and explained the parameters.  I was provided with a print copy of the survey responses. Before I even picked up the survey up I made it very clear that my intent was to write a publicly available article about the situation. I said that I plan to take notes of the responses. I made certain that the Campus & Community Planning staffer was totally clear as to my intents. I offered to share this post with them prior to my publishing it (they suggested two clarifications upon reading the draft: that the DPB deferral was intended to bring the proposal to a place it could be approved, and they didn't recall me asking for the correspondence I mention, but say it would have been withheld due to privacy concerns anyway). Once those formalities were dealt with, I began to read the survey responses. 

 

I read all the 200+ responses. Some were simple “I support/I oppose” type answers. Others, notably those opposed to the basketball court, could go on for several paragraphs or more. 

 

The first overall observation is that there is significant conceptual difference between those in favour and those opposed to the basketball court. Those in support of the basketball court focussed on big picture issues: community wellbeing, meeting needs of underserved communities (youth and teenagers), the importance of encouraging outdoor activities. Some referenced personal reasons of support, but most of these talked about the value for the whole community. Those opposed to the basketball court focussed on the deleterious effects of the basketball court on their individual and family lives.  Here the critique was very specific and it related explicitly to individual and family disruption and displeasure. They also tended to write more on why the court was bad. Whereas those in support focussed on the community value and contributed fewer words per submission.

 

In what follows I will detail the types of arguments made against the basketball court.  I am not trying to figure out people’s intentions – that’s always a murky business- but rather, what is said and how it was said. 

 

Very basically almost all of the 132 responses opposed to the basketball court said they opposed it due to noise. A good sub-set also called it ugly, referencing the unappealing imposition of asphalt in what is otherwise a lawn. Finally, there was a strong current identifying the court as magnate for disruptive male outsiders. Before delving into this complaint in detail there are two issues that arose that are not specifically the fault of a basketball court but may help contextualize the strong opposition from those immediately adjacent to court: lack of adequate building cooling during the heat wave and the use of outdoor amenities in some of the rental buildings by alleged outsiders.

 

Many respondents talked about having to keep their home windows open during the summer to counter extreme heat: “Add music and shouting from a basketball court in the summer when we all have our doors and windows open and are sweating through an afternoon video conference, we get to put up with pounding from a basketball court as well?  It will be awful. It will be just awful.” Clearly the building(s) that some of the respondents live in has had a serious issue (like most of us) last summer during the heat dome. There was an entire sub-theme of complaints that were linked to overheated housing units necessitating having windows open and thereby increasing the disturbance caused by the basketball court's assumed high noise levels. Linked to this were several complaints who describe the basketball court as a heat sink that would cause the ambient air temperatures to increase and thus cause additional hardship. One respondent very explicitly used a climate change/environmentalist perspective to critique not just the basketball court but continued pavement as preferred form of ground cover.

 

An additional non-basketball issue emerged as several respondents alleged the presence of unruly young men using a bbq set up at one of the local buildings. These young men apparently used the bbq set up to hold unauthorized parties.  Several respondents reported unpleasant altercations had occurred. It seems Village Gates Homes (the property manager of staff rental building in the UNA) needs to do a better job managing their properties. This issue was then used by several respondents to imply that the basketball court would be a magnate for more similar (or worse) behaviours.

 

From the information respondents included in their comments it appears that Village Gates Homes, the UBC staff housing property mangers, did not adequate address these ongoing issues. The heat issue was reported in the Campus Resident. Community residents proposed a range of solutions, but none appear to have been taken up by either Village Gates Homes, the UNA, or Campus and Community Planning. These festering issues might help understand how something seen as potentially disruptive could galvanize an already steaming community into action.

 

As for the basketball court itself the primary complaint was one of noise. Several respondents mentioned the noise study that had been commissioned was faulty (apparently there were some lengthy correspondence from one or two community members on the inadequacy of the noise study, but that correspondence was not shared with me). Determining what degree of and type of sound is acceptable is a highly subjective enterprise. I suspect that following close to two years of COVID work from home mandates people’s tolerance of extraneous sounds was becoming sorely tested as evidenced in one respondent’s comment: “The idiotic volleyball sand with the smelly, sideways-leaning port-a-toilet … is bad enough, but now you’re going to slap an asphalt rectangle right beside it exclusively for grown men to run around on?”

 

Many of the complaints about the noise focussed on the fact the basketball court was assumed to draw mostly men, and unruly men at that who would be loud, rude, and frightening: 

·       [basketball] “is not a useful sport for the vast majority of residents. Women, the elderly, children, and those with physical exceptionalities will be excluded. This is essentially an amenity for men, and I do not think that is the UNA’s main constituency.” 

·       “What if they are shouting at night?  … It may also scare off children and teenage girls, who generally avoid public places dominated by loud young men.” 

·       The court is going to be noisy and awful.  … Loud, ugly, gathering point for the nasty, vomiting-everywhere-on-weekends idiots who have colonized the back of [redacted].

·       It’s not just the basketball and taking shots, but the jocular shouts and music and general clamour.  I get … that the culture calls for music and boisterousness… 

·       I’m not sure how much we will be gaining with a large paved swath usable mainly by men for basketball.

·       UBC students or adults will colonize this space. There will be music, people eating and talking loudly in groups. They will play a form of aggressive ball that will crowd out families, kids, and sometimes probably teens as well. The design features seating so this will become a gathering venue. Not just a place for outdoor sport, but a place to lounge and talk and east and drink our of disposable containers. It will take more resources to keep litter at bay, and everyone who lives around it will be treated to the questionable music tastes of the court users. All the other courts have music playing all the time. …  It's a crummy plan.

·       Add music and shouting from a basketball court in the summer when we all have our doors and windows open and are sweating through an afternoon video conference, we get to put up with pounding from a basketball court as well?  It will be awful. It will be just awful.

·       Wesbrook will become a noisy party scene in the summer, when people and kids are trying to work or rest or sleep or even hear one another over the sounds from the court.

This is a sample of the most explicitly and detailed comments about the character of the noise and the types of people who will be attracted: mostly men, loud, obnoxious, drunken, and disorderly.

 

It may well be true that, like most public facilities, only a minority would have enjoyed the use of the basketball court. It may also be true that the noise would have a cumulative effect that for some residents would feel unbearable. Yet, I find myself concerned with the way that men are pathologized in these comments, especially young men who are said to engage in a “culture [that] calls for music and boisterousness.”  The responses consistently position these men as outsiders, interlopers, disruptors, and potential threats. There is no recognition that these men may well be neighbours, co-workers, colleagues, even relatives. These sentiments are consistent with an American pop culture perception of inner-city basketball.  In a previous blog post  I examined the extent to which these claims were imaginary, and despite their recurrent assertions among the respondents, the research is clear: basketball courts don’t generate unruly socially disruptive behaviours from suspicious outsiders (nor do they encourage it from resident players). Yet, the respondents essentially repeat the same complaints – loud, unruly, and potentially dangerous.  It is a shame they feel so disempowered and alienated in their current living spaces that the very idea of a basketball court sparked such an intense personalized pushback.