A resident of the city since 2009, the now-73-year-old secured a garden bed at Founders Park South upon its opening and brought her grandchildren there to plant tomatoes, carrots, mint leaves, and sweet potatoes. She began visiting the park more frequently after her retirement and eventually got two more boxes there to grow produce.
After she was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2017, Itzhak often drove from her cancer clinic to the park to meditate. She introduced the lush green space, which feature walking trails overlooking the intracoastal waterway, to friends she met at the clinic.
"We had lots of get-togethers at the park," Itzhak tells New Times. "And once the pandemic hit and we had nowhere to congregate, we basically turned the park into our second home."
Despite vehement pushback from Aventura residents, Itzhak and others' community garden has been ripped out and is set to be replaced by a handful of pickleball courts. While the project includes plans for a nearby location for a community garden, opponents say it will no longer offer the serene setting and character that it once did.
"I am not against tennis or pickeleball, but why destroy a beautiful peaceful park for that? They could have used some of the large areas in the other parks," Itzhak says.
On July 11, dozens of Aventura residents gathered outside city hall to protest the city's plan to build six pickleball courts at Founders Park South in hopes of keeping up with the craze over the racquet sport sweeping America. The project is also slated to include three tennis courts, new landscaping, lighting, and garden beds.
"People have been fighting this for over a year and a half," Aventura resident Ariel Penzer, who helped organize the protest, tells New Times. "And so people are just begging the commission to listen to the constituents."
Work on the project began last month using funds that the city allocated from the American Rescue Plan Act, which gave Florida billions of federal dollars to bankroll COVID-19 recovery. The new racquet-sport complex is scheduled to be completed by early 2024.
The city has defended the project by claiming there were limited options on where to build the courts.
"There isn't a perfect place to put everything...The commission made the decision that they believed was best for the entire community," Evan Ross, the city's communications director, previously told New Times.
Several generations of Aventura residents — from toddlers in strollers to seniors — gathered on the steps outside city hall on July 11 to protest the planned pickleball courts.
Photos by Aileen Quintana
With green megaphones in hand, they chanted "Save our parks!" and "Save our trees!" while hoisting colorful signs that read "No Nature, No Future" and "Stop Destroying Aventura."
"How stupid can a city that floods on a regular rainy day be to take away 33 beautiful, mature trees that have been here longer than the City of Aventura?" Penzer asks.
As contractors break ground on the project, local property associations, whose predecessors gave land to Aventura to use for the public park, have hit the city with cease-and-desist letters arguing that construction violates a covenant requiring Aventura to keep the park in its original form.
Penzer filed a request for an injunction on July 1 to halt construction of the pickleball courts, echoing the associations' claims that the project violates the terms of their predecessors' land grant to the city.
"It sets a very dangerous precedent for the City of Aventura to be going against the covenant on the land," she says.
The city says it's been planning the project for more than a year and that the new courts will give pickleball enthusiasts a proper space to play locally.
"The demand for pickleball obviously is no secret. Lots of the condos in Aventura have been converting some of their tennis courts to pickleball courts," Ross told New Times last week. "There are tennis courts on the main Founders Park, which is just across the street from Founders Park South. But the demand for those tennis courts, particularly at peak times, is much greater than the availability."
Ross said that while the last commission considered relocating the community garden to another park, the city found a way to accommodate both the courts and a new garden after some pushback.
But a resident petition says the new courts will not only make the park "noisy, crowded, and chaotic" but also deprive residents of "the only green natural sanctuary in the city."
Penzer says the project will put a damper on residents' enjoyment of their balconies and outdoor amenities, thanks to the incessant popping and clacking noise associated with pickleball.
"It's important to know that we have a really good fight," she says. "Residents are saying that they're willing to spend whatever it takes for the boards to fight this."
