When opened, the brand new Mega Courts Pickleball and Tennis Court facility located in southeast Calgary, will be among the largest indoor spaces for pickleball players to play in the city.

The facility is already in hot demand, with 60,000 sq. ft. of indoor space, that includes 13 over-sized pickleball courts and four tennis courts filling a need for more recreational and tournament grade courts in the city.

Comparatively, according to open data from the City of Calgary, the city itself only operates or shares 101 public pickleball and tennis courts, outside of courts that are operated by community groups or commercial operations.

The path to open Mega Courts hasn’t been a direct one, despite a dream over three years ago by company founder Vlad Voskoboinikov to create a space where he could himself play after picking up the sport.

“I discovered pickleball three years ago, and I wanted to play, and there was no place to play. So naively said, Well, why don’t I just open a place up?” Voskoboinikov said.

“This is kind of a project from the heart… we’re doing this because we’re players. We want to have a place that we could be proud of and our kids and grandchildren can be proud of, and a place where people could come together and just have fun.”

He said, however, building Mega Courts, especially in the final push to open, has meant not much time to play the game.

Its location next to the Calgary Soccer Centre, Flying Squirrel, and the Junior Varsity Volleyball Training Centre, already a hub for indoor sporting and recreation in the southeast, was a happy accident, however, according to Voskoboinikov.

“We actually had a place just down the street here, and the landlord at the last moment decided that they don’t want recreational and almost gave up two years into it. Then we saw this place, and I said, 60,000 square feet. Are you crazy? But then, on the other hand, after drawing it out I said, ‘well, go big, or go home,'” he said.

The name comes from the reaction he wants people to have when they step through the lobby entrance and into the playing area itself, he said.

“People you know initially said, ‘why don’t you get like, a cute name like pickle your nickel,’ or something like that? When you come in, you’ll understand the name. It’ll make sense to you,” Voskoboinikov said.

Already there has been demand to play at the facility given the number of courts available, and Voskoboinikov has been giving tours to groups wanting to use the facility—more than 100 over the March 8 weekend, with numerous phone calls and emails.

“I’ve been averaging between 250 and 350 emails a day,” he said

That feedback on social media has been largely positive, both from pickleball players and from non-pickleball players. A common sentiment being that having a dedicated pickleball court will allow basketball players to retake their outdoor court spaces for their game of choice.

Investment into the pickleball community

Creating the facility, despite the interest, hasn’t come without risk.

Voskoboinikov has put hundreds of thousands towards the project, with large capital investments up front to cover purchases like professional competition grade floors from Tomko, the creation of amenity and socializing areas, and unique for a space of its size, sound proofing before operations begin.

“The amount of money you spend on this thing, and this is basically what people want, this is your business right here. So, you want to make sure it’s as perfect as you can get, and that’s what we did,” he said.

Andy Strasser, President of Merlin Integrated Solutions, which has been installing the soundproofing on the roof, said the amount of fabric needed for the roof overwhelmed their supplier’s factory.

That work is being done not to make the entire court space free from sound, but so that when players are hitting balls on one end of the building, it means people can have a normal conversation on the other.

Voskoboinikov said that there has been a misconception from visitors when they see the miles of fabric being installed as baffles above the courts.

“I had a tour of like, about 100 people here, and they said, ‘well, I can still hear you.’ The idea is that you can’t hear me if I’m over there because you don’t want the sound,” he said.

He said that’s all in service of the playing experience. One based on the feedback from players at a number of clubs across the city.

Strasser himself said that one reason for taking on the project for Mega Courts was because of his own interest in pickleball and in creating a facility he wanted to belong to.

“I play pickleball, and I want to come and stop by. I can see myself after work, coming here with friends, or doing work right at lunch with colleagues,” he said.

“We’re really looking forward, because it’s going to be a five minute drive at lunch. We’re going to play for an hour and go back to work. I’m really looking forward to that.”

Strasser said the construction has been a real community affair with contractors wanting to join Mega Courts after having worked on it.

But that demand, along with the hundreds of other Calgarians who have expressed interest, has led Voskoboinikov to make a decision to limit the number of memberships that can be purchased, and to restrict the time that players can book courts in advance, so that everyone can feel like that there is a possibility of getting to play.

“We don’t want to oversell the memberships. I want people to be able to book a court. I don’t want people to be mad at us because of ‘I paid, I got a membership, and I never get a court.’ It would be easy to sell the same court 20 times, but we don’t want to do that,” he said.

“We think the community will reward us by loyalty. Sooner or later, there will be another club and another club, but if we build an experience for them, there’s no reason to go anywhere else. Even if you look at our memberships, everybody’s on the same playing level. Everybody can only book seven days in advance.”

He said that there would always be natural limits, like peak times on Friday evenings where members all want the same court, but the goal is to ensure that everyone has a chance to get to play pickleball during the week.

Mega Courts is set to open on March 13, after construction is complete and the City of Calgary completes their final inspections.

“The place will be clean and ready to go on Thursday, and literally, I’m guarding my phone and waiting for the city to give me a call. We just need the city to come here and do a final fire and health inspection,” said Voskoboinikov.

The courts open to the public on March 18. For more information, see megacourts.ca.