Noisy pickleball court near familys dream home driving them to brink: Relentless, invasive barrage

A pickleball court next to a Maine bayfront home is driving one family to the brink.In Belfast — two hours north of Portland — a family says a public pickleball court built near their dream home has turned their lives into a waking nightmare, with the relentless noise driving them to the edge of a mental health crisis.Alexander Giblin, 40, and his wife Lauren Valle, 39, live just 178 feet from four public pickleball courts at Belfast City Park, where the sound of paddles hitting balls rings through their Mayo Street home for up to 12 hours a day. The couple, who share the property with their two young children, ages 5 and 7, say they have been left sleepless, anxious and increasingly desperate for relief.“This is not a background tone,” Giblin told Belfast City Council on Tuesday.“It is a relentless, invasive barrage that penetrates our windows, our closed doors.

We hear it in every room.There is no reprieve.”The courts are officially open from 6 a.m.

to 9:45 p.m., but Valle claims players routinely ignore those hours.Broken light timers have allowed people to break into the lighting control boxes and keep the courts illuminated well into the night.“We get woken up by pickleball games started at 11:30 at night,” Valle wrote in a Facebook post.

“We often call the police.It is horrific.

We have lived here for 5 years, and have been tortured by it.”What the family once dismissed as a manageable nuisance has snowballed into something far more serious.Valle says she now suffers severe anxiety, insomnia and despair.

Over Memorial Day weekend, things reached a breaking point.“I became so severely distressed and agitated from the constant and continuous pickleball noise that by Sunday evening, I considered taking myself to the emergency room,” she told the council.“My brain and my nervous system are currently injured, and I am not OK.”The toll on the children has been equally painful.

Valle described her kids crying themselves to sleep and...