Massive pickleball complex with 43 courts set for Fort Lauderdale ahead of tournament

Fort Lauderdale will soon be home to a massive pickleball facility, as developers expect to break ground later this month on the massive space at Snyder Park.

The project is expected to bring $10 million of tourism economic impact for the city and provide 100 job opportunities in Fort Lauderdale, developer and marketer Brad Tuckman told the Miami Herald.

“We’re really trying to be a place for locals first,” he said. “And then of course, the revenue model is built also on having pickleball tourism, but we’re really building it for the locals.”

The $20 million project, called The Fort, will sit on nine acres of land in the southwest corner of Snyder Park and will include 43 pickleball courts, a lakehouse that will include food and beverage amenities, and an area for beach tennis and volleyball. Fourteen of the courts will be covered.

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Why so many? “Believe it or not, they’re going to be full,” said Tuckman, co-founder and CEO of The Fort. He said the idea, apart from the facility being for local use, is for it to be available for tournament play.

Discussions to build the facility began three years ago, when Tuckman and his partner, Rich Campillo, got tired of waiting on pickleball courts to come. So they approached Fort Lauderdale’s city commission with a plan.

“Three years ago, we brought this up and they laughed at us and said ‘Pickleball, what’s that?’” Tuckman recalled. Although the game — similar to tennis but with smaller courts and the use of paddles rather than racquets — dates back to 1965, it gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic because it was one of the few sports people could enjoy outdoors. As of 2022, Florida had 2,854 pickleball courts, the second highest number in the country, according to USA Pickleball, an organization created in 2005.

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The sport is most popular among people aged 65 and over, but has seen increased interest among younger ages, according to USA Pickleball. Fort Lauderdale’s 65-and-older community comprises 19.3% of its population, according to the U.S. census.

Tuckman said the goal is for the park to be open by mid-December, in time for the Association of Pickleball Players held in Fort Lauderdale from Dec. 11- 15.

Building The Fort

Snyder Park sits north of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and includes a nature trail, basketball courts and a dog park on 91 acres.

Tuckman said the area of the park where the pickleball courts will go is roughly nine acres and was once a quarry where stone was excavated for construction around the city in the early 1900s. Parts of it later became a lake. He said the city also once used the area to store seaweed and trucks.

“It’d be like a back house for the city where they had a garbage transfer station also,” he said. “We’re going to reutilize all the seaweed that has been stored there for the last 15 to 20 years, and we’re going to actually utilize that dirt again.” Other plans for that section of the park include revitalizing a seven-acre lake and making it swimmable again.

The Fort will also have a lake-house, which will offer food and beverages and provide views to the restored lake to one side and the pickleball courts to the other.

“While pickleball is the centerpiece here, what we’re doing with the lake is really going to be special because it’s going to provide a place and a community for people to go in and literally hang out and enjoy themselves while they eat and drink,” Tuckman said.

The facility will also have a pro shop locker room, and 4,000-square-foot event center that can cater to small events and will offer free access to neighborhood associations to host their meetings. Tuckman also noted there will be green space for other outdoor activities such as yoga.

“We’re also going to be a place where people come from all over the country to train,” Tuckman said. “People come from all over the country to come down and play tennis. People are going to come from all over the country to train with us and then you really think about it from a tourism perspective. The tourism for pickleball is huge right now as well. So, we’re expecting that throughout the year.”

Plans to bring the facility to Fort Lauderdale have been met with resistance, with petitions to maintain Snyder Park and the green space near where The Fort will be built. But Tuckman said the pickleball court won’t interfere with the other aspects of the park.

“I think the biggest misconception is that we just came in to steal land and do something, when in reality, we actually approached the city because we wanted to build something that was good for the whole community,” he said.

Still, Tuckman said he’s been receptive to criticism he’s seen online, including worries about increased foot traffic, removing a small beach, upending greenspace and pickleball noise. While initial plans called for partial removal of the beach, Tuckman said the site will keep a third of the beach and will restore it. Berms have also been added to quell pickleball noise.

“We’re going to do our best to be good neighbors, and we believe that we’re going to actually revitalize that part of the park and bring people to the park,” he said. “I just can’t make people like us but I’m gonna do my best to do a good job to provide a good place for everybody.”