A ribbon cutting ceremony was held on Thursday afternoon for the new pickleball court in Jefferson.
Several of the Jefferson Pickleball Committee, Jefferson city staff, Jefferson Matters Ambassadors, members with the Jefferson Garden Club, and relatives with the Radebaugh family were on hand for the ribbon cutting. What started as a grassroots movement from community members and resulted in the final product of a two court layout that cost $217,301 was completely shocking to one of those pickleball committee members in Jean Van Gilder.
“Well, it’s one of those things where you dream it and you think ‘yeah, this is probably going to take a long time to get this much money accumulated to do it.’ But, between the donors, and the city of Jefferson, and Grow Greene County they made this all possible. It’s wonderful, we love it!”
The project kicked started with a donation from the Radebaugh family of $40,000 that was to be used for recreational purposes in the city, along with over $82,000 of private donations and pledges and a $118,000 Grow Greene County Gaming Corporation grant, carried the funding across the finish line. Then on June 11, 2024, the Jefferson City Council, acting as the fiscal agent, approved Caliber Concrete of Adair as the contractor that started building the court after a groundbreaking ceremony was held in August of 2024 and completed in early May. Van Gilder was part of the group that was the first individuals to play on the fully finished court.
“We were here when they put the surface on and we’d been waiting for that for months. So we watched that and that was very interesting to watch. The way they do that with large squeegees, they move the paint around it. It was really cool. They waited for it to dry, came back and stripped it. And then the next day the young man (from Caliber) came and put the nets up, and we’re like, ‘Okay, this is it!”
Following the ribbon cutting with a dedication of some benches by the Jefferson Garden Club for the pickleball court. Van Gilder was excited to know that this project happened without any taxpayer money involved.