The towering lights that once blazed over Heritage Park's tennis and pickleball courts in El Dorado Hills are coming down for good, after the El Dorado Hills Community Services District settled a lawsuit brought by residents of a nearby senior community who said the glare was wrecking their sleep. The fight has dragged on for years, but under the settlement terms, the lights are headed for removal, and the district is on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs.
According to a report from CBS News Sacramento, the 50-foot lights were installed specifically to illuminate the tennis and pickleball courts at Heritage Park. Roughly 400 people live near the park, and many of them wrote to the district to complain that the lights were disrupting their sleep, per the same station's earlier reporting. Residents objected to the lighting in 2021 and filed suit against the district in 2022, according to a Yahoo News report.
The case, identified in settlement documents as Superior Court Case No. 22CV0640, was dismissed without prejudice as part of an August 2025 settlement between the district and the homeowners' group, Yahoo's reporting states. A statement posted by the Carson Creek/Heritage neighborhood group, Concerned Residents of EDH Heritage Village (CRHV), says the Community Services District, or CSD, retains obligations under the deal: the district will immediately disable the sports-court and parking lights and remove them within 24 months, according to a post from Heritage Carson Creek. The court is retaining jurisdiction until the settlement is fully carried out, the same post notes.
Legal Fees and a Murky Price Tag for Removal
As part of the deal, the district also agreed to pay the plaintiffs' legal counsel $70,000 to cover fees and costs, per Heritage Carson Creek's account of the settlement. What it will actually cost to tear the lights down, though, depends on which report you read. Yahoo's reporting says the district could spend up to $76,000 to remove fixtures installed just five years earlier, while the district had set aside $200,000 total for remaining settlement work, including the light removal and relocating a picnic area.
Other outlets have offered lower figures. The Mountain Democrat estimated removal costs at $30,000, while Village Life reported that homebuilder Lennar had offered to remove the lights at no cost to the district, with removal pegged at around $60,000. The district had expected to finish the remaining work before the end of June, ahead of an August deadline built into the settlement, Yahoo reported — though whether that timeline held isn't established in available reporting.
A Park Built Amid Opposition, Now Losing Its Lights
Heritage Village Park opened in 2022 with tennis and pickleball courts, a playground, a picnic area, and open space, according to Yahoo's account. A 2017 estimate had valued the lights now slated for removal at $204,500 total, including $45,000 for three pickleball-court lights alone, the same report states. Even as the lighting fight simmered, voters weighed in elsewhere: more than 90% supported Measure H in 2022, repealing park-related fees that had been charged for the prior two years, per Yahoo.
Earlier in the dispute, board members recommended against removing the lights, while the Parks and Planning Committee suggested an independent analysis once the park neared completion, according to the Mountain Democrat. That recommendation didn't hold, and the fight ultimately ended in the settlement requiring the lights' removal.
Not El Dorado Hills' First Light Fight
Park lighting has been stirring up trouble in El Dorado Hills since the early 1980s, according to a separate Village Life report tracing the district's history. That account describes park lights as a recurring “third rail” issue for community services district boards trying to balance sports use against nearby residents' concerns. The district's Community Park opened in 1990 despite fierce opposition over field lights, and neighbors of Promontory Community Park later sued over proposed lighting there too — a fight the district won in 2005 before installing directional lighting instead.
The Heritage Park dispute also mirrors a broader wave of pickleball-related friction playing out nationally. Pickleball participation grew 39.3% over two years, and a September 2023 report from KPBS found homeowners in the San Diego region and beyond increasingly turning to lawsuits over noise from the sport. One Carlsbad homeowner sued her HOA seeking to ban pickleball from community courts and $300,000 in damages, KPBS reported, while an attorney told the outlet his firm had handled more than 25 pickleball-related disputes stretching from Sacramento to Chula Vista. A similar fight in Aiken, South Carolina, over late-night noise and lighting from courts built in 2014 also ended in an apparent settlement, according to The Post and Courier.
