Pickleball Kingdom Brings Indoor Solution to Livermore's Noise Concerns

When Abhimanyu Dhariwal and his wife Shreya Trivedi went looking for a sport they could play together, they found pickleball. What they also found was a glaring gap in the Bay Area market: almost no indoor facilities to match the sport's explosive growth. That gap is about to close in Livermore, California, where the city's Planning Commission unanimously approved a conditional use permit for a new Pickleball Kingdom location at 4650 Arroyo Vista — the former home of JOANN Fabrics.

The Livermore venue will feature eight courts available for reservation, lessons, clinics, tournaments, and private events. Beyond the courts themselves, plans include a retail space, raised viewing area, game room, community room, offices, seating areas, and locker rooms. It's a comprehensive facility that goes well beyond just pickleball.

What makes this opening particularly notable is how it navigates the noise controversy that has dogged pickleball's outdoor expansion. The Livermore Planning Commission had previously rejected outdoor pickleball courts at Marlin Pound Neighborhood Park in December 2024 due to community noise concerns. The indoor solution changes the calculus entirely. The building features 8-inch-thick masonry units and a metal roof treated with acoustic insulation; all doors must remain closed during operating hours. An environmental noise assessment by Bollard Acoustical Consultants concluded that operations would be "generally inaudible" at the nearest property line at just 20 dBA — roughly equivalent to the sound of leaves rustling.

"The sport has been growing at a massive growth rate in the last few years and we wanted to be part of that," Dhariwal told the Planning Commission. Vice Chair Charity Steele called the project "a great solution," and Commissioner Yolanda Fintschenko praised it as "very well-thought-out." The 4-0 approval signals a model that other communities wrestling with pickleball's outdoor noise problems may want to study: move it indoors and the controversy largely disappears.

[Read the full piece](https://www.danvillesanramon.com/business/2026/06/28/pickleball-kingdom-poised-to-replace-shuttered-joann-store-in-livermore/)