Fredericksburg's $5.5 Million Racquet Center Brings Dedicated Pickleball Courts to Hill Country

Pickleball's first wave rolled through municipal parks and repurposed tennis courts with portable nets. The second wave looks like Fredericksburg, Texas: a $5.5 million purpose-built complex on Friendship Lane where pickleball is a primary tenant from day one, not a painted-over afterthought.

The Fredericksburg Racquet Center is a non-profit initiative involving the City of Fredericksburg, the Fredericksburg Tennis Center Foundation, and the Austin-based Fueling Tennis Futures Foundation, alongside tennis and pickleball professionals, community leaders, and racquet sports enthusiasts. The city is providing 20 acres on Friendship Lane for the development of the center. Day-to-day operations will be handled by RPM Academy, a professional tennis and pickleball group relocating from Austin. Discussions about the center began in the fall of 2023, following survey results from the City of Fredericksburg's Parks Master Plan, which showed a strong need for more pickleball and tennis courts, as well as walking trails in the community.

The proposed facility will feature 11 outdoor and 4 indoor tennis courts, along with 12 outdoor and 4 indoor pickleball courts. The facility, to be built in four phases, also includes a 3,600-square-foot, 2-story clubhouse and about 13,000 square feet of playground space, with walking paths and the playground remaining open access. Those four indoor pickleball courts are the detail that changes the calendar most for regulars: in the Hill Country, where summer heat and spring storms routinely shut down outdoor sessions, covered courts mean the game doesn't stop in July.

For context on what this means locally, the Fredericksburg Pickleball club currently operates at Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park at 432 Lady Bird Dr, running its regular open play and organized sessions off 8 permanently lined courts played on tennis surfaces with portable nets. Going from 8 shared courts to 16 dedicated pickleball courts, with indoor backup, is not an incremental upgrade. It is a structural shift in what organized league play, clinics, and tournament hosting actually look like in this market.

The facility will offer comprehensive instruction and programming for individuals of all ages and skill levels, led by RPM Academy professionals, with affordable community membership rates and scholarships to make access to racquet sports available to all. That scholarship component matters for a community model: it signals that the center is designed to absorb beginner players rather than filter toward competitive members who can drive membership revenue alone.

One official described the project as an opportunity to "bring a new level of service and community amenity" to the region. For a Hill Country destination that draws weekend visitors from San Antonio and Austin, tournament weekends at the new facility fit naturally into that economic logic: extended overnight stays, regional circuit events, and ancillary spending that municipal park courts simply cannot anchor.

Phase One of the facility was set to open in Spring 2026. With construction underway and a long-term city lease already secured, Fredericksburg's pickleball community is closer than it has ever been to having the infrastructure that the sport's growth in the Hill Country has long outpaced.