At 4 a.m. on Thursday, October 8, crews arrive at Stephen Harris Park to start the first of two concrete pours for six new pickleball courts and two tennis courts. Each day's pour is 240 cubic yards, delivered by 25 ready-mix trucks coming through the Riviera Circle parking lot entrance at about four trucks an hour. The El Dorado Hills Community Services District says it starts that early to leave time for delays and enough daylight to finish the slab.
Those two mornings are the loud part of a project whose clock started more than four years ago. That gap between approval and construction is the most useful thing to understand about parks here. Every project the CSD finished or started in 2026 spent far longer in approvals than it will spend under construction. Once you see that pattern, the dates for Bass Lake and the Powerline Bike Park make more sense.
Four Years of Approvals, One Season of Construction
The CSD board approved the Stephen Harris renovation as a Capital Improvement Project on June 9, 2022. Here is how it got from that vote to the October pours, according to the district's project page:
- September 2022: Contract awarded for design and construction drawings.
- May–June 2023: Community outreach survey on the court layout.
- August 10, 2023: Board approves the court layout.
- September 5, 2023: Pickleball noise study, with more than 40 local players turning out to help.
- June 18, 2025: County land use permit approved, after a noise study and Technical Advisory Committee review.
- December 2025: Project goes out to bid, followed by utility reviews with SMUD and PG&E.
- April 2026: Contract awarded to Parker Landscape Development, Inc.
- June 3 to June 25, 2026: County asks for plan changes, the district resubmits, and preconstruction meetings are held.
- June 30, 2026: Construction begins.
The County land use permit alone took almost two years after the noise study. Construction is scheduled to wrap up in fall 2026, and as of September 25 the CSD said the project was on schedule.
When it opens, the 5.93-acre park in St. Andrews Village along Tam O'Shanter Drive will have six dedicated pickleball courts and two tennis courts, one of them striped for pickleball too. It will also get a full basketball court, windscreens and sound cladding, and a bottle-filling fountain. Drought-tolerant plantings will replace turf that isn't used for play, saving an estimated 1.5 million gallons of water a year. The courts sit on post-tensioned concrete slabs instead of asphalt. The CSD says that means more upfront cost for a longer-lasting surface.
Until then, the Riviera Circle lot is closed for construction staging. The playground and the parking lot on the Tam O'Shanter Drive side are still open. The park's quarter-mile walking path loops around the courts, crosses Tam O'Shanter Drive and Silva Valley Parkway, and continues to the Serrano Trail System.
The request came before the plan
An earlier Village Life report shows how long the demand has been around. At a CSD board meeting, longtime resident Lesley Connell said El Dorado Hills had four indoor wooden courts open just two mornings a week, plus two outdoor courts at Heritage Park that she described as consistently full with people waiting. One of her three suggestions was to convert part of the Stephen Harris tennis courts to pickleball. The board made no decision that night. The renovation now underway closely matches that suggestion, and it took years of process to get from the request to the pour.
The Powerline Trail Made an Old Shortcut Official
The other big 2026 project finished construction on July 27, and the CSD's August 12 update calls it fully open for public use. The Powerline Recreation Trail, also called the Utility Corridor Trail, is a 1.1-mile east-west route from El Dorado Hills Boulevard to Beatty Drive. The CSD notes that people had been walking the corridor informally for years. The project made it an official trail for safety reasons and closed a connectivity gap that the district's 2021 Master Plan listed as a top community priority.
What changed on the ground:
- A 50-foot prefabricated pedestrian and bike bridge over a seasonal stream, plus a 55-foot timber retaining wall along the Butterfly section
- Resurfaced 10-foot utility roads, better drainage, and restored or realigned native soil trail
- Post-and-cable fencing and log barriers to keep walkers and riders on route
- Two pedestrian crosswalks with traffic control signs where the trail crosses Hensley Circle
- New wayfinding signs along the route
At the El Dorado Hills Boulevard end, the trail connects to a Class 1 bike path maintained by El Dorado County. A 0.3-mile sidewalk links it to Promontory Community Park. One section crosses land owned by the Promontory Homeowners Association, and the CSD maintains it under an easement agreement.
The trail follows the same timing pattern as Stephen Harris. Because the route runs through a utility corridor, the district needed sign-off from both power companies. PG&E sent a "no impact" letter in March 2023, and SMUD sent comments in May 2023. The construction itself went quickly. The bridge, crosswalks, signs and grading went in during March and April 2026, a culvert was added in mid-July, and the trail was finished on July 27, 2026.
Bertelsen and Community Park Followed the Same Pattern
Peter Bertelsen Memorial Park shows it most clearly. The final concept plan, cost estimate and construction footprint were approved on July 13, 2023. Construction started on August 4, 2025, finished in May 2026, and the park reopened with a party on May 18. That's two years of preparation for about nine months of building.
The new firefighting-themed splash pad means the district now has two, counting the one at Promontory Park. Both run daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so they are closed for the season now. At El Dorado Hills Community Park, the playground for ages 2 to 5 reopened on March 11, 2026. It has new play panels, musical features, slides, spinners and a playhouse.
Using That Timing to Read Bass Lake and the Bike Park
The CSD's two biggest pending projects are both still in the approval stage, which has taken the longest on every recent project.
Bass Lake Park, Phase 1. Village J Park is a 12.525-acre parcel planned for parking, a dog park, and play structures with shaded picnic areas. It is the first phase of a larger vision for Bass Lake Park, roughly 211 acres covering the lake and the open space around it. Field studies started in February 2020 with traffic counts and cultural resources surveys, and the biological and arborist reports were updated as recently as April 2026. The CSD's July 29 update lists these upcoming milestones:
- Draft environmental impact report released for public comment in fall 2026
- EIR certification by the CSD board, expected in early 2027
- A Planning Commission hearing and Board of Supervisors approval, with no dates set yet
- Bid proposals and park construction in 2027
The district labels every one of these dates a "best case estimate." On recent projects, construction was the fast part and approvals took years. Bass Lake still has an EIR, a Planning Commission hearing and a supervisors' vote ahead of it.
Powerline Bike Park. The proposed bike park on the same utility corridor needs a Conditional Use Permit from the County. The CSD's latest update, dated May 1, 2026, says the permit was still under County Planning review and that the district was meeting with the County twice a month to make design changes needed for approval. The County deemed the application complete on October 20, 2025, and the page lists a County public hearing as a future milestone. Stephen Harris spent about two years waiting on its County land use permit. The bike park has been in that same stage for about a year so far.
What to Watch This Fall
The October 8 and 9 pours are the next visible milestone at Stephen Harris. Neighbors should expect heavy equipment and loud work from 4 a.m. to noon on both days. For Bass Lake, the next step is the release of the draft EIR for public review. That comment period is the stage where community input helps decide how quickly a project moves.
The CSD's free Trunk-or-Treat and Scarecrow Contest is Friday, October 30, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. in the EDHCSD Pavilion parking lot. Applications to take part close October 16.
At Andi & Trent, we track El Dorado Hills park projects as closely as home sales, because both affect the streets around them. If a project like Stephen Harris, the Powerline corridor or Bass Lake is near your home and you'd like to know what it could mean for your property, reach out for a free home valuation and consultation.
