I can’t remember exactly when or how I began hearing the rumors that a racket-sports concept known only as “Ballers” was going to open a club in Philly with both of my two favorite racket sports, padel and squash (plus “much, much more”) but I was instantly intrigued, to say the least. Then I stumbled across their website…
It looked like something Banksy might have put together for a MoMa exhibit using Instagram to chronicle retro racket sports and industrial urban decay.
There was a rapid succession of weird, wonderful, eye-catching photos one after another. Barbie dolls playing tennis. What looked to be a graffiti-soaked subway entrance. 70’s-looking squash (or maybe racquetball?) players diving for balls. Turn-of-the-century power plants. Bright neon technicolor soccer fields. People playing golf in a field during what appeared to be the Great Depression. And yes, padel courts.
But that was it, save for an email address that began, “LFG@…” My interest was not only piqued, it truly peaked.
(For one thing, Philadelphia was the first place I ever played padel. Specifically at the legendary original location of PADELphia on Venice Island, which was the first ever pop-up padel court in the U.S. For another, Philly, along with Boston, is one of only a small handful of cities in the entire world that is home to all three “original” racket sports of court tennis, rackets, and squash — so a project like this being in Philly makes perfect sense in my mind).
But try as I might, I simply couldn’t find any more concrete information about Ballers. A friend of mine who works in the world of high-fashion, branding, and design even suggested it might just be “a creative exercise in subversive inspiration” — whatever that means.
Then I Saw Something Interesting Last Week…
Namely, a few bits and pieces of news on local Philadelphia blogs and media sites citing a Philadelphia Inquirer article about, “The Battery in Fishtown getting a huge new indoor sporting facility called Ballers.” So, I dug in…
As it turns out, Ballers isn’t just some art-school project, it’s a very real thing — or at least, it’s about to be.
According to the Inquirer article, Ballers will be a 45,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art sporting facility located inside a new residential and hotel complex known as The Battery that’s being developed in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia.
While The Battery is new, the building it is housed in is anything but. In fact, the 200,000+ square-foot building is a former PECO power plant that first opened over a century ago (in 1923 to be exact) and once was one of the main sources of electricity for the entire Philadelphia region.
Dark Old Past, Bright New Future
Along with the soon-to-open Padel Plant project in Richmond, VA, this is the second former U.S. power plant to be re-purposed into a new facility featuring padel, pickleball, and more.
All told Ballers — which will occupy the part of the power plant that housed the huge turbines that generated the electricity — will feature:
- A 4,500-square-foot turf field that can be used for multiple sports including soccer…
- Six pickleball courts…
- Two squash courts…
- Four golf simulators…
- Multiple sports bars and restaurants, and…
- Most importantly, three padel courts.
This means that along with PADELphia and the courts at private clubs like Philadelphia Cricket Club and Merion Cricket Club, the region will soon be home to more than a dozen padel courts (though not all publicly accessible).
As soon as we know more about Philly Ballers and their padel offerings, we’ll post it right here — so please stay tuned.
And in the meantime, if you’re into that sort of thing, be sure to check out the creepy-AF video tour just below of what Ballers and The Battery used to look like inside.
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