By Ian Lintott, Founder of Total Sport Solutions

I’ve walked into more warehouses, former big box stores and empty industrial units than I can count over the years, usually standing next to someone who has already fallen in love with the space. They’ve got the price they want. They’ve got the location. Sometimes they’ve already started imagining where the pro shop goes. And then we start measuring, and I have to be the one to tell them it won’t work.

That conversation never gets easier, but it’s a lot better to have it before someone signs a lease than after.

Pickleball has grown faster than almost anyone in this business expected, and that growth created a problem most people never see from the outside. There are more people who want to open indoor facilities than there are buildings suitable for them. Entrepreneurs, private clubs, community organizations and even a few school boards are all circling the same handful of properties in every city in Ontario.

So, when people ask me how to build an indoor pickleball facility, my honest answer is that the building decision comes first, and it matters more than anything that follows it. What I want to walk you through is what I actually look for when I’m evaluating a space with a client. Almost none of it is visible from the sideline, and I think that’s worth pulling back the curtain on.

Ceiling Height Is the One Thing You Can Never Fix

If there’s a single lesson I’ve learned from years of doing this, it’s that ceiling height is the decision you don’t get a second chance at. You can grind down a floor. You can work around plenty of structural quirks if you catch them early. But a room that’s too short stays too short. There’s no renovation that adds vertical clearance to a building without essentially rebuilding it.

Pickleball involves a lot more lob and overhead play than people expect when they walk in. A ceiling that looked plenty tall on the listing sheet can turn out to be a completely different number once you account for the ductwork, the sprinkler mains and the light fixtures hanging down from it. I’ve had clients measure to the roof deck and get excited, only for us to measure to the actual lowest obstruction in the room and realize we’d lost several feet of usable height.

That’s the number that matters, and it’s almost never the number on the real estate listing. If you take one thing away from this piece, let it be this. Bring a proper measuring tool and measure to the lowest-hanging obstacle, not the ceiling itself.

What’s Hiding Behind the Walls: Columns, Slabs and HVAC

Ceiling height gets most of the attention because it’s the most unforgiving, but it’s rarely the only surprise in an older building. Warehouses and retail conversions come with history, and that history matters more than people expect.

Support Columns and Your Court Layout

Support columns are one of the more common heartbreaks. A beautiful, wide open floor plan can hide a structural column right where a court needs to go, and moving one of those is rarely simple or cheap. I always tell people to sketch out their intended court layout on paper before they even walk into the building, so they know exactly where the columns need to be clear and where they don’t. Indoor court dimensions are not negotiable, and the building either accommodates them or it doesn’t.

The Concrete Slab Tells Its Own Story

A slab that looks perfectly fine to the eye can be out of level, painted over from its last life as a retail space, or carrying stains from years of industrial use that no amount of cleaning will fully lift. None of that means the space is dead, but it does mean there’s real work and real cost between where the building is today and where it needs to be before a finished playing surface goes down.

The buildings that surprise people aren’t usually the ones with obvious problems. They’re the ones that look move-in-ready but aren’t. It’s also the reason a lot of players can point to one spot where the ball just doesn’t come off the ground right. That’s rarely bad luck. It’s usually a slab that didn’t get the attention it needed.

HVAC Is the Budget Item Nobody Plans For

Then there’s what you can’t see at all. Indoor pickleball generates more heat, humidity and general wear on a building’s HVAC system than most spaces were ever designed to handle. A system sized for a quiet warehouse or a retail floor is a very different animal from what a full day of active play across multiple courts demands.

Anyone who has played a summer evening session in a facility with the wrong system knows exactly what that feels like. The air gets heavy, the floor gets slick, and the game changes. It’s one of the quieter budget items in a conversion, and one of the ones people plan for the least, right up until the first hot week of the season.

Zoning and Permits: The Paperwork Nobody Warns You About

Beyond the physical building, there’s a whole layer of municipal approvals that varies from city to city and can quietly derail a timeline if it isn’t addressed early. Zoning, occupancy classification, exit requirements and washroom counts are all different depending on where you are, and a change of use from industrial or retail to a recreation facility almost always triggers a fresh look from the building department.

I’ve seen good projects lose months to permitting simply because nobody checked in with the municipality until after the lease was already signed. Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener and London each handle this differently, and the difference is measured in months.

None of this is meant to scare anyone off. Pickleball’s growth is real, and demand for well-built indoor courts is only going to keep climbing across Canada. But the facilities that succeed are almost always the ones where someone did the unglamorous work of evaluating the building properly before falling in love with it.

Building Something That Lasts

I got into this business by accident, coming from a landscaping background and stumbling into modular court tile at a trade show years ago. I’ve built a company around the belief that installation excellence and doing the unglamorous groundwork properly is what separates a venue that plays beautifully for a decade from one that starts causing problems in year two.

Your players will feel that difference, even if they never know why. The facilities that stay full every night of the week are the ones where the bounce is true, the air doesn’t sit heavy, and the lines are exactly where they should be. Players usually can’t tell you what makes a venue feel right. They can absolutely tell you which one they keep coming back to, and that is your revenue.

Everything above is how we think about it. What we actually hand clients is the tool. We wrote a two-part white paper on evaluating a building for an indoor facility, and Part 1 finishes with a seven-section checklist built to be printed and carried through the building with you. Floor condition, ceiling clearance, column spacing, player movement, HVAC, the municipal and fire requirements, and the amenities that decide whether people stay after their game. Every line has a blank beside it for what you found. Part 2 picks up once you know the space works and covers what goes on top of the slab, from surfacing and lighting to dividers and padding.

This article explains what matters and why. The checklist is what you hold in one hand with a laser measure in the other. If you’re touring space right now, or think you might be within the year, get the white paper before your next walkthrough. And when you want a second opinion on a specific building, call us before you sign, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the minimum ceiling height for an indoor pickleball facility?

Eighteen feet of clear height is the minimum we’ll work with, and 20 to 24 feet is what you actually want for club play. The word doing the work there is clear. Ductwork, sprinkler mains and light fixtures all hang down off the deck, and in a warehouse conversion they can eat two to four feet before you’ve measured anything. Measure to the lowest real obstruction rather than the roof structure, and take that measurement at several points across the floor. If a building leaves you 16 feet or less, walk away. No amount of good design fixes a short room.

How much square footage does one indoor pickleball court need?

The playing area itself is 20 by 44 feet, but you can’t build to that number. Once you add safe run-off space around the lines, plan on roughly 34 by 64 feet per court. That works out to about 2,200 square feet per court. 

Can you convert a warehouse or former retail space into a pickleball facility?

Yes, and most of the indoor facilities we work on in Ontario are exactly that. Warehouses tend to win on ceiling height and open floor plans, which are the two hardest things to fix. Former retail spaces often have better parking, washrooms and street presence but frequently fall short on clearance. Either can work. The evaluation is the same in both cases, and it has to happen before the lease is signed.

Does an indoor pickleball facility need a special HVAC system?

It usually needs more system than the building already has. Active play across multiple courts puts real heat and humidity load into a space, and humidity is the one that causes trouble because it makes the floor slick and unsafe. Most warehouse and retail HVAC was sized for a handful of people and low activity. Budget for an assessment early, because discovering the shortfall after opening is expensive and it costs you bookings during your best season.

Do I need a zoning change to open a pickleball facility in Ontario?

Often, yes. Moving a building from industrial or retail use to a recreation use is a change of use under the Ontario Building Code, and that triggers a review covering occupancy classification, exiting, washroom counts and accessibility. Requirements and timelines vary by municipality, so a project in Guelph won’t follow the same path as one in Toronto. Talk to the local building department before you sign anything. It’s a free conversation that can save you months.

Planning an indoor facility? We handle commercial pickleball court construction across Ontario, from building evaluation through to final line marking. Book a consultation and we’ll walk the space with you.