Up A Creek With A Paddle: Pickleball Concepts Gobbling Up Big-Box Stores Left Vacant By Retailers

Pickleball is probably coming to a mall near you.

The phenomenon that was ranked the fastest-growing sport in the U.S. for the third year in a row last year has become a huge new demand driver for retail properties across the country, helping fill vacant spaces that lost big-box department stores.

In the past year, courts have opened in retail spaces in St. Louis; Concord, New Hampshire; Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey; Roswell, Georgia; and Washington, D.C. — spaces formerly occupied by Bed Bath & Beyond, Old Navy, Burlington, CompUSA and Forman Mills stores. Four locations have opened in Utah from operator The Picklr, all replacing former retail stores: Bed Bath & Beyond, Rite Aid, Office Depot and Walgreens.

More pickleball facilities are planned for vacant retail spaces in Richmond, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; Stamford, Connecticut; and Tempe, Arizona, coming to former Macy’s, Belk, Saks Off 5th and At Home locations.

Nearly 9 million people played the sport at least once in 2022, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association’s report for pickleball last year, an 85.7% increase from 2021. It was the third year in a row that pickleball earned the title of the nation’s fastest-growing sport. Growth statistics for 2023 aren’t available yet but internet search data from Google Trends show interest in the sport has almost doubled since last July.

“It’s something that people have been looking for specifically on the tailwind to Covid for connectivity, but also a sport that isn't intimidating,” Ace Pickleball Club Chief Growth Officer Diego Pacheco told Bisnow. 

Many more new pickleball venues are on the way, as not only one-off facilities open but as some brands plan to launch dozens of locations at once. Ace Pickleball Club owners have over 30 franchises in the works, 90% of which are planned for second-generation retail spaces. Billionaire and Major League Pickleball founder Steve Kuhn is planning on unleashing 50 locations of his Picklemall concept within the next year, which will “solely focus on the reuse of indoor and stripmall facilities,” according to a press release. 

Bisnow spoke with three pickleball operators, a mall landlord who brought in pickleball and a retail expert, all of whom said there are many reasons why pickleball makes sense for former department and big-box stores. Among the advantages are large footprints, high ceilings, few columns, parking, restrooms and HVAC units already installed. In addition, indoor facilities ensure year-round play and noise concerns are less of an issue. 

“Over the last number of years, shoppers have moved away from department stores, and so we've had more vacant department stores and malls,” JLL Americas Director of Research, Retail James Cook told Bisnow. 

Vacancy in shopping malls last quarter stood at 9%, more than double the overall retail market’s vacancy, according to a JLL analysis of CoStar data. 

“You've got some more vacant space, and you've got an opportunity to create a new anchor,” Cook said. “And entertainment and sports and things like pickleball can be that great new anchor.” 

Stamford Town Center’s former Saks Off 5th became that opportunity for Mia Schipani and her three other co-founders when they were looking for a location to place their new privately funded pickleball concept, Pickleball America.

The shopping center was already shifting toward becoming a lifestyle center when Schipani — a broker for Houlihan Lawrence by day — and her three co-owners pitched an 80K SF pickleball facility for a former Saks Off 5th, which closed in late 2021. 

“They were so excited,” Schipani told Bisnow.

“They knew that this was an opportunity to really drive foot traffic to the mall. And it fit in with where they were going."

Retail wasn’t the first place the partners thought to look at for their venture. Schipani told Bisnow industrial space would have been an obvious solution — but there wasn’t any available.

“There is no supply and industrial space because of all this last-mile, Amazon business that has just quadrupled over the years,” Schipani said. “That would have been the first place we would have looked. But there is no industrial space.” 

The venture looked into taking vacant Class-A office space but the ceiling heights didn't work, and there were too many columns. On top of that, she said the office owners weren’t interested in repurposing their spaces. 

They then moved on to look at strip malls and former Bed Bath & Beyond spaces — the company filed for bankruptcy in April and plans to close 480 stores and affiliates by the end of the month — but were met with hesitation.

The new New York-based owner of Stamford Town Center, however, was willing to add the tenant to a center that it was already building out with businesses like New York Comedy Club, Soccer Fun Zone and art gallery SEN2 Galleria. Kiddo Land, a playground and virtual reality destination, is also on the way.

Now in its 80K SF location, the Pickleball America team plans to use the venue to host a variety of sporting, music and cultural events, and it will feature lounges, a café/bar, locker rooms, game areas and a club store, alongside the pickleball courts.

JLL found that lifestyle centers — malls that offer entertainment options, often in more open-air spaces — see lower vacancy rates than other retail segments, and that consumers are more willing to spend more for experience-based activities, even with high inflation. 

Westfield Annapolis shopping mall is looking to take advantage of those trends. Its two-week-old pickleball court at a former Nordstrom parking lot is part of the owners plan to bring in experience-based retailers.

Three years after the Nordstrom shuttered at the beginning of the pandemic, the mall has converted the former department store’s feeder parking lot into 12 pickleball courts. 

“The more that we can do to make it like we're a one-stop shop, I think, the better chance we have to really continue to drive traffic,” Westfield Annapolis General Manager Steven Stavropoulos told Bisnow. 

“As a byproduct, you're going to have commerce because people are spending more time and energy in these spaces.” 

The courts are temporary, but Stavropoulos said the operator, Ball At The Mall, is interested in moving the courts inside the mall, and adding other sporting features like lacrosse.

Of the 34 Ace Pickleball Club locations under development, Pacheco told Bisnow that 90% of them, or about 30 stores, are planned for second-generation retail spaces. Pacheco said he couldn’t reveal what stages of development the locations are in. 

The company’s founders, many of whom are alumni of indoor trampoline park operator Sky Zone, are planning to open over 100 locations within the next three years. The plan is for the facilities to be a membership model, with members able to play at any Ace facility. 

The first location, a 36K SF facility in a former CompUSA computer store in Roswell, Georgia, opened last week.

Pacheco said he has seen some malls that would rather take on a nationally proven retailer if they have the opportunity, but others, even in hot markets, would rather choose the pickleball option.

“We actually do see some landlords, even in those markets like Miami, and they're like, ‘hey, we actually would rather choose you guys over a national user, because they see the vision,’” Pacheo said.

“They're offering an activity in their shopping center, that is drawing bodies, not only to play pickleball, but also when they're done playing pickleball, they're going to have a drink at the bar next door, they're going to go buy their dinner from the restaurant next door, do their shopping in all the grocery stores.” 

One of the biggest hurdles for finding real estate for the sport is the space requirement, especially in dense urban areas. Anna Valero, who is behind a new pickleball and 70K SF roller rink that opened in D.C. in May, said that finding a space in the city forced her team to get creative. 

“With a concept like this, it requires so much space that oftentimes looking at what are the nontraditional loose structures that are going to allow for the content to be successful is really what we understood to be the kind of the quickest way to market in D.C.,” Valero said.

Her Kraken brand, which builds out sports-meet-socializing venues in the greater D.C. area, is planning to build at least five more pickleball courts in the D.C. area within the next three years. 

With millions of square feet of pickleball courts in the pipeline, it seems inevitable that the pace of openings will have to slow down eventually. 

“There's definitely a point where we will have enough pickleball courts to meet that demand,” Cook said. 

But for now, Cook said operators are diligently doing their homework, looking at demand and demographics, to ensure the locations will be successful wherever they land. 

“There’s a good understanding that if they build it, people will come and want to use the facilities,” he said. 

Pacheco said Ace is focused on creating brand awareness to stand out in what could be an oversaturated sea of pickleball courts. 

“I think you'll end up seeing a little bit of a shakeout and certain brands really having to prove that they're better quality,” he said. 

The question of longevity remains — will people still be playing pickleball in five of 10 years time? While it’s impossible to see into the future, Cook said the demand is unlike previous competitive socializing fads that have eventually seen their booming popularity fade, such as escape rooms and ax throwing. 

“Pickleball seems to have organically become this thing that a lot of people are really excited about," he said. "And so pickleball concepts don't have to create the demand. They're meeting a demand that exists.”