Even New York’s iconic Times Square is not immune to the pickleball takeover
Broadway and Times Square is known for its bright neon lights and famous theater productions. But now, move over “Wicked” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” make way for… Pickleball?
Why are pickleball courts being built in Times Square?
Like many cities and regions around the country, there aren’t enough places in New York City to play the fastest-growing sport in America. Now, even the most coveted real estate in the city is being scooped up by those looking to “dink and drop” on their opponents.
The iconic Times Square will soon have its own pickleball haven. CityPickle, a company that has been at the forefront of creating courts in the city, announced plans for a 37,00-square-foot facility on the eighth floor of the Paramount Building in Midtown Manhattan. It’s set to open this fall, and will include seven indoor pickleball courts, a restaurant while still leaving room for CityPickle’s new headquarters.
Other New York landmarks also getting courts
The Times Square courts aren’t the only project the company has in the works. They recently signed a 3-year deal with the city to cover the famous Wollman Rink in Central Park with 14 pickleball courts for use in the spring and summer months. Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman for the partnership between the city and CityPickle, said there is a continuing need for pickleball facilities.
“The feeling is it is undercourted, if that’s the word,” he said. “There’s not infrastructure in the city for the popularity of the sport, so there was a real opening there to do something spectacular at the moment when pickleball is catching on.”
CityPickle is also in the process of building a 60,000-square-foot pickleball spread at Anchorage Park in Dumbo, right under the Brooklyn Bridge. That’s another three-year contract with the city that includes 11 courts, community programming and food trucks.
Why all the pickleball court mania?
Pickleball’s popularity has exploded since the COVID-19 pandemic. Straight Arrow News outlined the phenomenon and the sports battles over court space, and pickleball’s unique sound, in a two-part series earlier this year. Dale Van Scoyk is the owner of a pickleball consulting firm, and explained why court demand isn’t going away anytime soon.
“We’ve gone from 3 million to 30 million players, depending on which set of statistics you take. And what that means is there’s a demand for courts,” Van Scoyk told SAN. “There’s been conversion of tennis courts to pickleball, because that was the easy way. They were there. They were not heavily used, sometimes in just total disrepair, and this was a way for communities to quickly satisfy a little bit of the demand that’s there.”
There are not enough tennis court conversions to curb demand in New York City, according to CityPickle’s founder Erica Desai, who was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “Right now, the way many people play is they bring their own nets to scraps of pavement around the city.”
In addition to the major projects undertaken by Desai’s company, there are places like the Red Hook Pickleball Club and Velto Pickleball Club springing up in the city.
The silver lining that comes with these new pickleball ventures is that most of them are indoors or in large parks surrounded by the hustle and bustle of one of the biggest cities in the world. That means no noise complaints.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
