New pickleball club coming to Hyde Park next year
Prick up your ears, pickleball fans: A new court is cropping up in Hyde Park soon.
Commercial real estate firm Newmark announced Thursday it has secured a 20,000-square-foot lease at 91 Sprague St. for the Boston Pickle Club, a “best-in-class pickleball venture.”
The agreement is a “win-win outcome” for the landlord Griffith Properties and fans of the fastgrowing sport, said Joe Pearce, Newmark’s local managing director, in a news release.
The club is expected to open in the first quarter of 2024. It will have “state-of-the-art technology for court surfaces, lighting and temperature control,” the release said, and capacity for 875 members at different tiers, seven courts, drop-in court rentals, equipment rentals, clinics, lessons, and fast-casual refreshments.
It will be far from the only pickleball venue in town. In South Boston, PLK boasts five courts and personal cabanas, and public parks — from Brookline to Jamaica Plain — have erected pickleball nets between areas for tennis and basketball. It makes sense that courts have cropped up periodically in recent years as participation rates in pickleball more than doubled nationwide, according to data from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
The sport has also garnered a fair bit of drama: The Globe reported earlier in August that pickleball has “turned neighbor against neighbor, triggered lawsuits, ticked off tennis players, and caused so many rotator cuff and other injuries that Americans could reportedly spend as much as $500 million in costs tied to pickle injuries this year.”
But tech entrepreneur Steven Hauck, who founded the Boston Pickle Club alongside nationally ranked racquet professionals Johan Durant and Stephen Mitchell, said in the release he hopes the new space will be more community-minded with the goal of making “a highly positive impact on the neighboring communities of Hyde Park, Milton, and Dedham.”
“Boston Pickle Club’s approach will meet the quantified public and private demand to play pickleball on the highest quality indoor courts,” Hauck said in a statement. “Our model is membership-driven, targeting the very inclusive sport of pickleball and offering the communal feeling of being a part of a club.”