Life Time opens Winter Park club with 13 pickleball courts, wellness focus

Winter Park’s newest pickleball stop is not a stand-alone court complex. It is a five-acre athletic country club built to make the sport part of a much larger stay-all-day experience, with 13 courts, fitness, recovery, dining and kids programming all under one roofline at 1225 Bennett Avenue. Life Time opened the club on April 24, giving Central Florida its first athletic country club from the brand and putting pickleball near the center of a premium membership pitch.

The court count is the clearest signal of where the market is headed. Life Time says the club has 10 outdoor courts and three indoor courts, a setup that supports open play, clinics, leagues and events in the same place. That matters for traveling players and retreat weekends because it reduces the usual tradeoff between court access and comfort. A dedicated pickleball venue may offer more court volume or a more tightly focused competitive scene, but Winter Park layers in a Beach Club-style outdoor area, a full-service spa, lounge and dining spaces, a large Kids Academy and a significant fitness floor. For a group planning a play-and-recover trip, that kind of bundle can be more useful than chasing separate reservations around town.

The move also shows how premium athletic clubs are using pickleball as an anchor amenity, not an add-on. Life Time’s Winter Park materials describe the club as serving members from 90 days to 90+ years old, which explains why the company is building for families, remote workers, serious athletes and casual players in the same environment. The club page lists the site as 85,000 square feet on five acres, while the launch release describes the project as more than 173,000 square feet across five acres, underscoring just how much space the company is devoting to the concept.

Winter Park fits into a broader Florida push. Life Time opened its transformed Harbour Island club in Tampa on July 9, 2024, with 20 pickleball and tennis courts, and in April 2024 it bought 8.5 acres in Seven Pines for a planned athletic resort club in Northeast Florida, its sixth club in the state. The timing lines up with a larger pickleball boom: USA Pickleball says Pickleheads added more than 2,300 new locations in 2025, bringing the national total to 18,258 places to play, while the Sports & Fitness Industry Association says 24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025. Winter Park is Life Time’s answer to that demand, and a sign that the best premium clubs now sell court time, coaching and recovery as one trip value proposition.