The pickleball craze doesn’t seem to be slowing down and Boca West Country Club (Boca Raton, Fla.) is taking advantage of that momentum with their new $20 million pickleball center.
“I am a huge believer in pickleball and the future of the sport especially for country clubs,” says Robert Norton, Director of Racquets of Boca West.
The new center features 25 courts with 12 of them being covered to protect players from the Florida heat, a dedicated stadium court, a new retail shop, new locker room facilities, an event lawn, and a wraparound terrace with extensive seating.
Features that make sense
When the pickleball wave first started, Boca West had one court in the middle of a golf cart parking lot with duct tape lines.
As Norton and team started to see the interest rise, the club slowly started adding courts. Starting from one then four then eight to 20.
“Every 20 to 25 years, you get the chance to renovate a complex, and this was our chance and it just so happened to be right when pickleball was booming,” says Norton.
Norton says he had multiple conversations with the club’s general manager to add certain features that made sense for the location of the club.
The covered courts were one of those features. Members now have the best of both worlds in being able to enjoy being outside and having the option to move inside when the heat becomes too much or it’s raining.
Being a members-only club, Norton says the goal of any renovation or big idea stems from whatever the team thinks will serve the members.
“The facility allows us to host some great things whether it’s tournaments or exhibitions,” he says. “But at the end of the day, we’re only hosting those things to make the members happy and bring them entertainment. That’s what it’s for.”
The construction to the facility started last March and opened in May of this year.
Included in the facility is a retail space over 1,000 square feet with an office, full kitchen, bar area and locker rooms with showers.
The dedicated pickleball pro shop features pickleball wardrobe and paddles.
“If we’re going to have 300 to 500 people check in every day to pickleball, it really needs its own space,” he says.
Creating a stadium experience
The stadium court was built with experience in mind.
“There are more things you can do in a stadium court with microphones, bringing in professional players, and having members around it to watch an exhibition,” he says. “That’s a huge benefit to our members and it really opens up the playbook when it comes to things we can show our members.”
It also adds another element of excitement to allow members to play on the court when Boca West hosts its club championships and adds a whole other level of excitement.
With Norton stepping into his role last November, this upcoming season is his first time to add his stamp to the racquets programming.
The covered courts guarantee certain clinics or events take place and that’s what Norton is hoping to add more of this year: weekly clinics, strategy clinics, inter-league play, hosting local league championship games and more.
“The field is completely open for what we want to bring and there’s really nothing we can’t do on the facility we have,” he says.
Why Boca West landed on 25 courts
Norton says the decision to create 25 courts came from watching member interest in the sport.
A few years ago, the club built 15 courts, but the sport kept growing. The season before the facility was built, the club bumped the court number up to 20 and they were still getting filled.
Twenty five courts seemed to be the right number for two big reasons, says Norton. First, that is the amount of space the club had to work with and in order to go with more than 25 courts, the club would have had to sacrifice more tennis courts or parking.
“Covering half of those courts means you can have 48 players playing on covered courts at once,” he says.
Looking at the growth of the club and membership demographic, Norton saw the club in general is getting younger and that younger age group is playing a lot of pickleball.
With 25 total courts, the club has 100 members playing all at once, which is the number Norton and his team hope to be at moving forward.
Other club departments are taking advantage of the new complex, too, especially with the new event lawn available. The director of wellness is planning on leading classes on the lawn and fitness coaches are becoming certified in racquet training.
“Pickleball is great, but you also need recovery, you need preparation and things to go along with games, so we are collaborating with other departments to bring that to life,” he says.
Design lessons
Norton advises other clubs that want to invest in something similar to talk with your builder early around the design aspect of the development.
“One of the most important parts is to make sure that the facility is being built by, or at least designed by, people that understand racquet sports,” he says.
Norton says he has talked to other country clubs that have completed a construction project and the planning was done by construction people rather than racquet people. This has caused design flaws that could have been prevented if someone that plays the sport was a part of the process.
“Whether it’s where the fences or gates are located or what direction the courts are facing, the people who are in the sport everyday are going to have better insight,” he says. “People who aren’t are looking at it from a looks perspective, but they don’t think about what kind of tree roots are being put next to the court, or what kind of leaves are going to blow on the court or where the water supply is going to come from.”
