The country’s leisure time has undergone a major transformation in recent years — We’re now a pickleball nation.
Anyone who has stepped onto a pickleball court will agree it’s the fastest-growing sport in America, and that jump in popularity has led to a boom of pickleball businesses, including the opening of countless indoor courts.
Such is the case in Highland Park, where at least two new pickleball-focused indoor facilities are now in operation or soon to open. That includes the Dinx Social Club, whose owners and founders David and Brooke Sloane said is creating a new tier of pickleball offerings for the area.
There, 23,000 square feet of former grocery store space has been turned into a luxury indoor pickleball facility, with six courts, several golf simulators, a self-pour bar and food offerings.
“We want you to feel like you’re on vacation,” David Sloane said.
Sloane and his wife both come from the real estate world. Like “most of the United States,” he said, they got into pickleball during the pandemic.
“We got into it, we enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until we were on a family trip to Florida with our extended family and we were at a facility … where we saw the potential for the area,” he said.
But unlike Florida, the weather in the Midwest isn’t conducive to playing outdoors year-round. Building an indoor facility comes with numerous requirements, Sloane said, including the ceiling height, column spacing and building dimensions. He didn’t want a slapdash operation, Sloane said, shoving as many courts as could fit into whatever building he could find.
The ceilings are more than 18 feet high, Sloane said. Extra thought has been put into the lighting, from brightness to temperature. Dead spots were ground out of the floor, and the glass walls that separate the courts help with sound dampening.
Because pickleball is incredibly popular, the clientele has high standards for what they expect, Sloane said.
“It’s been exciting and fun,” he said. “It’s also daunting, because there are a lot of people here who care very much about the game and the quality of play, so getting that right for our customers has been key.”
He hopes to build a connection between the players and the club, hence the emphasis on additional offerings beyond just some courts. Currently, the club is open to everyone as Dinx builds a community.
In the future, it will transition into a private-membership model, Sloan said, comparing it to a golf club. He encourages people to check out what the business has to offer in the meantime.
Also in Highland Park is Club Pickle & Padel, currently under construction along Skokie Valley Road, which is expected to open later this year. The collaboration between the city of Highland Park and its Park District will offer 10 pickleball courts and 4 padel courts under a newly constructed 50,000-square-foot dome.
According to the Park District’s website, the new dome structure was recently installed and inflated.
