Willoughby wants to restrict Leisure Centre parking. Netball isn’t having it.

Ask any netball parent about the car park at the Willoughby courts on a Friday night or a weekend and watch their eye twitch. If you have done the drop-off dash you know the drill. With the new centre still being finished you cannot get close, so you drop your child to run in on their own and then you start circling. Fifteen or twenty minutes of laps can still leave you missing the first five or ten minutes of their game.

Part of the fun is that you never know who is on the gate that night. There are usually two people managing the entrance, and some are perfectly reasonable and allow cars in as others leave. Others will hold you out until the second quarter of the next round of games, by which point you are staring at a car park that is sitting half empty. Turning up early does not reliably help either. And when it is all over, getting back out can be a twenty minute project of its own.

Plenty of families skip the gamble and park in the surrounding streets, which the residents around Bicentennial Reserve know all too well. Drive through on a game day and it is car after car after car lining the kerbs, with the odd gridlock for good measure. Those streets fill fast too, so the walk-in plan does not always pay off. And then there are the netball parents with their secret spots. Some involve a stroll through pitch black bushland to reach the courts. Others will take the location of theirs to the grave, and fair enough.

So it raised eyebrows this week when word spread that Willoughby City Council is proposing to change the parking around the Willoughby Leisure Centre precinct, and that Northern Suburbs Netball Association is not happy about it.

What Willoughby Council is proposing

Willoughby Council has opened community consultation on a set of parking changes across the Willoughby Leisure Centre precinct, ahead of the new Leisure Centre opening later this year. It says it expects parking demand to grow as more people use the new facilities, particularly on weekends and through the netball season from March to September, and that the changes are meant to improve access, manage parking more effectively and keep traffic moving safely.

In practice the proposal introduces time limits and member-only restrictions across car parks that are currently unrestricted. The main changes include:

• Upper Leisure Centre car park: from no restriction to Leisure Centre members only, with a two hour limit
• Lower Leisure Centre car park: from no restriction to a three hour limit, all day Monday to Friday and 8am to 3pm on weekends
• Grassed car park on Small Street, open during netball season: from no restriction to Leisure Centre members only, with a two hour limit
• Flat Rock Reserve car park: from no restriction to a three hour limit, with permit holders exempt
• Artarmon Road, north side between Edward Street and Willoughby Road: from no restriction to a four hour limit, 8am to 8pm daily
• Small Street and Pendey Street: tightened stopping and time limit rules
• Some residential streets around the courts: proposed resident-only access on Friday, Saturday and Sunday

For a netball family who is not a Leisure Centre member, and whose morning at the courts runs well past two hours, the two closest car parks becoming members only is the sticking point.

Why Norths Netball is objecting

Northern Suburbs Netball Association, which is based at the courts and represents 24 local clubs and more than 6,000 members, has come out against the plan. On peak competition days, Willoughby Council’s own traffic consultants recorded up to 100 teams playing across four timeslots, which gives a sense of how many cars are trying to reach the courts at once. In a post to its members the association warned that if parking feels bad now, the proposal means reduced parking times, fewer usable spaces and less access, and it urged the netball community to make a submission.

The association has also shared a template objection letter addressed to Willoughby Council’s traffic engineer. Its core argument is that parking in the precinct is already at capacity, and that adding demand from the new facility on top of a busy netball season makes restricting existing spaces unworkable. Rather than limiting access, it wants Willoughby Council to look at options that add capacity, including:

• A second storey on one of the Leisure Centre car parks, which it suggests could be paired with a vertical garden to help green and cool the precinct while lifting capacity
• Opening the grassed area behind the Incinerator for extra parking using permeable eco-friendly surfaces, pointing to similar setups at the Ku-ring-gai and Hills District netball associations

Its message to Willoughby Council is that with the money being invested in the new Leisure Centre, the parking around it should be expanded to match the demand, not wound back.

Not just a netball problem

The squeeze is also seasonal. Regulars say the precinct usually has enough room outside peak times, but it is overwhelmed on Saturdays and right through the netball season from March to September, when the courts, the pool and the neighbouring ovals are all busy at once. That is the window Willoughby Council’s restrictions are aimed at.

The reaction on Willoughby Council’s own social media suggests the concern runs wider than netball. Bicentennial Reserve is also home to summer baseball, and commenters pointed out that baseball games can run longer than netball, so any drop-off and pick-up zones need to sit in the right accessible spots to genuinely take pressure off parking.

Residents are divided. Some welcomed Willoughby Council planning ahead for the busy periods, but said the restrictions will only help if they are actively enforced, so people can still get in and out of their own driveways during Saturday sport. Others asked why nearby streets that fill up on weekends, including Gaza, Garland and Central Streets, are not part of the proposal. The idea of a multistorey car park, which Norths Netball also raised, came up more than once.

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