In a dramatic transformation worthy of an emergent butterfly, the once-wilting Yorktown Green strip center in Yorktown Heights is blossoming anew.
There’s a constant feeding frenzy at upscale Uncle Giuseppe’s supermarket (years ago a funereal Food Emporium). Steps away, across the Green, illuminating a long-dark Super K property are recently opened TJ Maxx, FIve Below, Michael’s, Don Pablo Mexican Cuisine, UPS Store, and, later this year, an indoor sports attraction called Sportime Pickleball Yorktown that will occupy 30,000 square feet, with two-thirds of that footprint devoted to 12 pickleball courts.
The highly-anticipated indoor playground is under development by Sportime Clubs LLC, New York, which President and CEO Claude Okin calls “the largest operator of tennis clubs in New York State,” offering courts and camps in various combinations of tennis, volleyball, and pickleball. It operates 192 tennis courts and 95 pickleball courts across more than 20 locations. Sportime also owns the John McEnroe Sports Academy (which will have no presence in Yorktown).
Most pickleball courts have been hybrid affairs, overlaid on tennis courts. “Pickleball generally is not played on dedicated spaces,” says Okin. “It started as a gym sport or a blacktop sport. He points out that hybrid indoor pickleball courts can be found in Somers and Peekskill, where volleyball courts are pressed into service for pickleball during downtime, “but they’re not the same kind of perfect playing conditions like Yorktown’s going to be in regards to spacing and surface and height and lighting and parking,” says Okin.
How did Yorktown draw Sportime’s attention as an optimal place to pioneer its standalone pickleball venture? A suitable physical space is the first criterion, says Okin. The outer dimensions of the playing space need to be at least 30 feet wide and 60 feet long, “and that’s very hard to find because most commercial spaces are 22 to 28 feet between columns,” says Okin. “And then we look at local demand, population density. Is this an area where we see signs that pickleball has taken root or is spreading? Then there’s the demographic cross-section of ages. Are there enough folks we think would want to indulge. Is it a high-traffic location? Yorktown checked most or all of the boxes.”
Adds Sportime Managing Director Joseph Siegel; “Of all the clubs that we are opening later in 2025, Yorktown seems to have the most buzz in regards to social media. Siegel said that the busy activity on an app called Team Reach that pickleballers use to coordinate games and groups of players has underscored the pent-up anticipation among players to flock to a local indoor playing surface.
“The community can’t wait,” says Siegel, who estimated the pool of players who will be within reach of the Yorktown location as “easily in the thousands.” Adds Okin, “We think people will come from a fairly long distance – 30 to 45 minutes maximum, with the core coming from up to 15-20 minutes away.” Adds Okin, “We think Yorktown is great and we think people will come from a fairly long distance north and south.”
“And what’s amazing,” observes Okin, “is that even though there are no indoor clubs anywhere near Yorktown, and the sport is so new, there already is a pickleball retail store in Yorktown.” (Paddle Pro is at 1500 Front Street in Yorktown Heights).
“At the moment, almost every market is dramatically underserved,” says Okin. He says that beyond once-a-week pickleballers, it is not uncommon for active players to “paddle up” three times a week – or even five times. “We want to give them a great reason to play year-round.”
Each of the Sportime Pickleball dedicated venues, says Okin, “will have a full-time general manager, a full-time pickleball director, a staff of certified coaches, different types of programming from clinics for adults and a junior academy that we’re developing to level- rated open play sessions, tournaments and parties. Low-cost monthly memberships will come with benefits such as reserving court time farther in advance than can non-members.
While pickleball currently is all the rage with the sizable cohort of Baby Boomers, Sportime Pickleball sees it as multi-generational. Students are a significant source of growth for pickleball, eventually as popular a sport for youngsters as is tennis.
Says Joseph Siegel: “Kids are introduced to tennis and volleyball in elementary school, play on middle school and high school teams, then college opportunities, professional and even Olympics. I think pickleball over time will follow the same trajectory. We see it in summer camps where kids like it more than tennis because it’s easier to pick up. Eventually, the average age will go much lower than it is now.”
Claude Okin thinks that Sportime Pickleball Yorktown ”may very well wind up being our best pickleball club just in terms of I think the whole experience it offers. The way it lays out and the partnerships we’re going to make with the community and the surrounding areas, I just think it’s going to be a great place to play.”
Bruce Apar is Editorial Director of River Journal.
