By
David Towns
An indoor pickleball palace that had been trumpeted near the The Villages has gone kaput along with sister facilities at retirement communities elsewhere in Florida.
The Pickleball Club had been under construction on a 4.7-acre parcel off County Road 466 near the Hampton Inn. The 40,000-square-foot climate-controlled club would have offered 16 indoor pickleball courts. A one-time entry fee of $1,000 would have been followed by a $100-per-month membership fee.
In April, a press event had been held to show off the facility at The Villages, which was touted as being halfway finished with the promise of opening in late 2024. Company officials did not address the unique challenge that the facility was going to face, in that it was not golf cart accessible for residents of The Villages.
The company was planning to construct 15 indoor pickleball clubs in Florida and had purchased property for a club in Ocala. Each pickleball facility was expected to cost between $10 to $12 million.
Now the company has announced it is going out of business. Pickleball Club locations which had been up and running in Lakewood Ranch and Port St. Lucie are now closed. News reports in Port St. Lucie indicate The Pickleball Club there closed suddenly, giving its members less than 24 hours notice that it was going out of business. Members said they were disappointed.
The company announced the closing on a LinkedIn post, “It is with great sadness that we must announce that we have closed the company,” the LinkedIn post states. “We did not have sufficient financial resources to continue operations. We have started the process of liquidating the company assets, including our two club locations in Lakewood Ranch and Port St. Lucie.”
