Skokie pickleball club seeks expansion as indoor demand grows
Pickledilly’s 11-court Skokie club is set to add four more courts, a sign that indoor pickleball demand is already pressing past its first footprint.
Eleven indoor courts are no longer enough to contain Pickledilly’s growth in Skokie. The Village Board unanimously backed site plan revisions on May 19 that would expand the club by about 40 percent, or 15,000 square feet, and add four new pickleball courts.
Pickledilly LLC, based at 4919 Main St., sought the change through a special-use permit modification, and village planning documents show the expansion is being treated as a working part of the site rather than a quick add-on. The club’s own website describes the business as an 11.5-court indoor facility, and the new proposal would push it even further into full-scale sports venue territory.
That matters because Pickledilly has already built a broader operating model around court time. The Skokie facility offers learn-to-play classes, leagues, competitions, corporate events, yoga and stretch instruction, which shows the business is not just renting floor space for casual games. It is trying to fill calendars, not just courts, with programming that keeps players coming back indoors year-round in a market where weather can cut off outdoor play for months.
The club opened in early 2025 in the former Rich’s Britches space, next to Sketchbook Brewing and near the Skokie Valley Trail. Its founders, Lauren Busey, Amy Lillibridge, Nathan Cachila and Armi Cachila, built the concept after wondering where they and their neighbors would play when the weather changed. That origin story now looks prescient as the club moves from launch mode to expansion mode in less than two years.
Village staff also signaled that the bigger footprint would fit the site’s current parking supply. The revisions focus instead on circulation and the placement of ADA-accessible spaces, a clue that the village sees the project as a long-term recreation asset rather than a temporary novelty. In a retail corridor anchored by recreation and trail traffic, the facility is already behaving like an anchor tenant.
The local push comes as pickleball keeps spreading far beyond its 1965 origins and pandemic-era surge. USA Pickleball’s 2024 growth report counted 68,458 known courts in the Pickleheads database and 15,910 U.S. court locations in the court-location database after another year of rapid additions. Skokie’s question now is sharper than simple approval: if an indoor club with 11 courts is already reaching for four more, how much court time is the local market actually asking for?
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