St. Pete Athletic expands, adding padel courts and social dining space

The paddle market hit a genuine inflection point heading into 2026 as St. Pete Athletic added nearly 20,000 square feet and pushed its St. Petersburg footprint to 50,000 square feet, turning a pickleball club into a broader racquet-sport destination. The expanded facility now includes 14 pickleball courts, two padel courts and six professional table tennis tables at 680 28th Street South in the Warehouse Arts District.

The club opened to the public in January 2026 after about three years of planning and building, and the latest addition shows how quickly the business model has moved beyond open play. Reuben Pressman, part of the ownership group with Graham D’Amico, Jarrett Sabatini and Nathan Stonecipher, said, “We consider ourselves a three-sport athletic club.” That framing fits the way St. Pete Athletic has positioned itself from the start, with programming and entertainment aimed at a wider audience than the typical court-rental crowd.

Pressman also said the club had 800 paid members before the facility was fully complete, with several hundred people on a waiting list, a sign that the hybrid sports-and-social formula is already resonating. The club employs about 90 people and is planning to host a nationally televised pickleball tournament in June, giving the expansion a clear event-driven business angle as well as a recreational one. The grand opening celebration for the padel courts was held April 25 and included a tournament, ribbon-cutting and professional exhibition match.

The dining component matters just as much as the courts. Rose’s Dining & Drinks serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee and cocktails, and both members and non-members can use the space. That makes the club feel less like a place to squeeze in a match and more like a full-day stop, with food, drinks and spectator appeal built into the experience.

That is the real shift for readers deciding where to train, travel or book a retreat-style stay. USA Pickleball’s 2025 growth report put its court-location database at 18,258 places to play and its known court count at 82,613, while the United States Tennis Association said U.S. tennis participation reached 27.3 million players in 2025. Add local estimates of more than 25 million padel players worldwide, and the logic behind St. Pete Athletic’s expansion becomes clear: the strongest clubs are no longer just serving one sport. They are trying to own the whole day, and that can make the experience materially more attractive, or simply more expensive, depending on how much value players place on padel crossover, dining and the club atmosphere.