Life Time opens North Shore club with 28 pickleball courts

Life Time opened its North Shore club in Northbrook with 28 pickleball courts, a scale that instantly makes the 114,000-square-foot property one of the Midwest’s biggest amateur pickleball hubs. The club sits on 17.7 acres at 1300 Techny Road and gives Chicago-area players a year-round option built for both casual runs and organized competition.

The court count is the story here. Life Time says North Shore has 18 indoor courts and 10 outdoor courts, a split that matters in a market where weather can wipe out outdoor play for months at a time. That kind of inventory can cut wait times, expand league slots and keep clinics, ladders and tournament brackets moving instead of backing up behind a handful of courts.

The club is Life Time’s 16th Chicago-area location and its sixth opening in the region in the past five years, a clear sign the company sees suburban Chicago as more than a fit-and-finish market. North Shore is also plugged into the brand’s wider network, with member access to nearby clubs in Northbrook, Old Orchard, Evanston, Vernon Hills and Lake Zurich. Another Chicago-area club is already underway in Naperville and is slated to open in early 2027.

Life Time is packaging the pickleball build as part of a larger athletic country club, not a standalone racquet facility. Along with fitness and wellness space, coworking, Kids Academy, a co-ed rejuvenation suite and a resort-style outdoor pool, the club includes stadium-style seating for some indoor pickleball courts, built to handle spectating and livestreaming when the action gets bigger than a Tuesday night open play session.

That bigger stage showed up fast. The club’s public grand-opening Money Ball Tournament drew 569 registered players and ran June 25-28, putting a mass-entry event on the board before the doors were even fully settled into regular traffic. The schedule only gets louder from here: the PPA Tour’s Veolia Chicago Open is set for Oct. 5-11 at Life Time North Shore, with amateur matches scheduled alongside the pros at 1300 Techny Road.

For everyday players, that combination of court volume, tournament infrastructure and indoor access is the point. North Shore is not just another premium club opening in the suburbs. It is a high-capacity stop built to absorb demand, host major brackets and make Chicago’s north side feel like a real pickleball destination.