Gotham Pickleball will open a second Long Island City location later this year after signing a 10-year lease for a space near the LIC waterfront.
The pickleball facility, which opened its first location at 5-25 46th Ave. in December 2024, will open a 26,000 square-foot space at 52-37 2nd St. in the fall, founder David Goldberg confirmed.
The new space, which will feature six indoor courts and two outdoor courts, will significantly expand on Gotham Pickleball’s current offerings.
The center’s original LIC space boasts four courts and quickly reached capacity after opening just over a year ago due to a demand for the sport in the area, Goldberg said.
With most of Gotham’s clientele coming from the neighborhood or nearby Manhattan, Goldberg decided to keep the company’s first expansion within Long Island City.
He said the new space “caught his attention” after it came on the market six months ago because it is close to both the Hunters Point Ferry terminal and the Vernon Boulevard subway station. The space, which is leased by TF Cornerstone, also boasts an outdoor courtyard, which afforded Gotham the “unusual opportunity” of creating outdoor courts.
“It’s a very interesting space,” Goldberg said. “It’s in an area right by the water with a lot of development around it.”
Goldberg described Gotham’s first 14 months in LIC as a “very successful operation,” noting that the pickleball center employs a coaching staff of 10 who have built a “connection with the local community.”
“I think they have really built an environment where people want to come, hang out, exercise and feel good,” he said.
Gotham aims to give priority to existing coaches at the new facility to ensure that coaches can receive more hours, while he also hopes that the new space will help deal with existing demand for pickleball in the neighborhood.
“We have more demand for programming and space than we can meet with the four courts that we have,” he said.
Goldberg himself was late to the pickleball boom, first picking up a racket in 2023. The sport, which has been the fastest-growing sport in the United States four years in a row, quickly took hold of Goldberg, leading to Gotham’s foundation just over a year later.
Between jobs at the time, Goldberg spotted a gap in the market through a lack of indoor pickleball courts and set about establishing his own company. Through “dumb luck,” he managed to acquire an ideal space at 5-25 46th Ave. within a month of hatching the idea.
“It was just a very fortunate situation that I was able to rent it very quickly and then do the build out very quickly,” he said.
Goldberg believes pickleball has boomed in popularity because it is accessible to people of all ages and abilities. The sport, which prides itself on being suitable for people aged eight to 80, can be quickly learned, he added, making it very easy for first-timers to get hooked.
“I took up pickleball because I don’t really like going to the gym, and I needed cardio in my life,” he said. “I started playing, and I was, ‘I can do this right from day one.'”
He further described the sport as a “very social game,” fostering connections between local residents, particularly when it is played in doubles. He also believes that the average game length of 15 minutes is conducive to more social engagement.
“There’s a lot of conversation on the court,” he said. “When you play tennis, you’re quite far apart… but you can really have a conversation while you’re playing a game of pickleball.”
Goldberg added that the sport is addicting because it is so accessible and so social, stating that players can easily play two or three hours in one session.
“It doesn’t require a huge amount of running… so you’re able to just keep playing.”
