Pickleball Club Signs 25K-SF Lease for New Courts in L.A.
By Nick Trombola July 16, 2024 12:53 pm
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Pickleball players in Los Angeles will have a new facility to relish later this year.
California Smash Pickleball and Social Club have signed a new 25,300-square-foot lease at 815 North Nash Street in El Segundo. JLL (JLL)’s Gary Horwitz, Caroline Bethel and Kamil Agha represented California Smash in the deal, while Gateway Business Properties’ Jim Sullivan and Andrew Hardin represented landlord Gretchen B. Farrell Trust.
“With the growth of pickleball and consumers’ need for social interaction and entertainment, we wanted to create a clubhouse-type destination that encourages conversation, competition and camaraderie,” Brett Drogmund, California Smash founder, said in a statement.
California Smash’s new complex, currently an industrial building, is set to open later this year with 10 new padded indoor pickleball courts, as well as a full-service bar, restaurant and a dance floor.
“California Smash is a great addition to El Segundo’s dynamic sports and entertainment landscape,” said El Segundo City Councilman Lance Giroux. “This is an example of how the city is adapting to changes in the commercial real estate market and supporting creative concepts for vacant or underutilized space.”
The United States’ pickleball craze has been tough to ignore in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There were nearly 37 million players in the country as of the end of last year, according to the Association of Pickleball Players. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which conducts its own analysis of sport participation, estimated earlier this year that pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in the nation for the past three years in a row.
All those players mean thousands of dedicated courts — a natural bedfellow of commercial real estate development in recent years as various pickleball projects snap up space in former industrial or retail buildings.
That includes, for example, a new 35,500-square-foot lease in Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington, D.C., in April, or the purchase of a 5-acre site in Greenacres, Fla., just outside Miami at the end of last year.
Nick Trombola can be reached at NTrombola@commercialobserver.com.
