Pickleball social club coming to St. Pete's Warehouse Arts district
By Henry Queen
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 12, 2024

The Factory St. Pete has landed a major tenant that will bring year-round foot traffic to the anchor of St. Petersburg's burgeoning Warehouse Arts district.

Reuben Pressman, founder and managing operator of the St. Pete Athletic Paddle and Social Club, said Thursday that the club will occupy 45,000 square feet at The Factory by early 2025. It signed a lease earlier this year, Pressman said.

The Factory is a creative and cultural hub at 2606 Fairfield Ave. in the Warehouse Arts District. It includes roughly 90,000 square feet of buildings on 6.5 acres that abut the Pinellas Trail. A project of this magnitude is a major milestone for the Warehouse Arts district, which is expected to accommodate more mixed-use development as land use rules become less onerous. It also marks a sign of progress for The Factory St. Pete, a creative and cultural hub that saw foreclosure action in 2022.

Tom Gaffney, as the controlling partner of Factory Investors of St. Pete LLC, purchased The Factory in May. Jake Wollman of KW Commercial and Joe Esposito of AXXOS secured St. Pete Athletic as a tenant for the site, which made the acquisition a more enticing investment for the buyers. Gaffney couldn't be reached for comment on Thursday.

Investors in the pickleball club include Cathie Wood, Trevor Burgess and Jon Carlon, Catherine Parenteau, Travis Rettenmier, and Larry Scott.

Pressman teamed up with local business owners Jarrett Sabatini of Intermezzo and Nathan Stonecipher of Green Bench Brewing to provide food and drinks. Graham D’Amico, owner of the Major League Pickleball team Florida Smash, will serve as co-operator alongside Pressman.

The club will include 14 pickleball courts (eight indoor and six covered), six table tennis tables and two courts for padel, a Mexican racket sport.

"It can take an hour to get on a [pickleball] court in the city of St. Pete," said Pressman, the former founder and CEO of software company Presence. "There's an obvious need for that. But, also when you look at the social club experience and community and event space, those types of spaces are very tough to come by. From the high-end club experience, you have the [St. Petersburg] Yacht Club and The Vinoy, essentially. Neither of which I think you can get into right now. ... We're trying to create an accessible social experience at a complete fraction of the cost."

While most of The Factory is vacant, a small portion is currently home to artist studios. They will be relocated to buildings 7 and 8 at the far east of The Factory. The pickleball club will be in buildings 2, 3 and 4 on the west side of the property.

Wannemacher Jensen Architects will design the space.

"They probably have the most experience out of any of the firms we looked at locally in building athletic facilities," Pressman said. "Coupling that with the hospitality concepts they've done as well, they seemed to be perfect."

Membership fees started at $150 per month but have already increased to $200 following a surge in demand and will eventually grow to $250 per month, Pressman said. Courts will also be open to the general public for a daily admission fee. The club is scheduled to be open seven days a week from 5 a.m. to midnight.

The Factory currently houses The Fairgrounds, Daddy Kool Records, Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, Drew Marc Gallery, Heiress Gallery and the Museum of Motherhood. It also hosts the wintertime Indie Flea Market.

St. Pete Athletic previously planned to open its club just north of the Edge district on property owned by developer Jonathan Daou, but those plans fell through. Renovating vacant space to accommodate indoor pickleball is a trend that can also be seen in Ybor City with the Tampa Pickleball Crew club.

"Most of the other properties that we were eyeing didn't fit economically because they required significant new build," said Pressman, who also serves as Warehouse Arts District Association board member. "It was a mix of, 'This is the perfect location and it fits what we're trying to build.'"