"A few years ago, private-equity firm SC Hospitality took over a tennis club in the Hamptons and added pickleball and padel courts and a restaurant overseen by Billy Durney, the chef behind the upscale burger joint Red Hook Tavern. A number of new families joined, the club began hosting Sunday cookouts, and Daniel Haimovic, SC's chairman, started spending a lot of the summer there with his family, including his two elementary-school-age kids, who played tennis, padel, pickleball, and basketball at the club."
"It quickly became "my happy place and my kids' happy place," Haimovic said. He thought it was a shame that there weren't any similar family-friendly clubs in Brooklyn Heights, where he lived with his family the rest of the year, especially given how full of children it is. But working for SC Hospitality, a sports-and-entertainment-focused arm of SC Holdings, he also knew how hard it is to find space for anything approximating a tennis club in New York City."
SC Hospitality converted a Hamptons tennis club by adding pickleball and padel courts and a restaurant, attracting families and weekend social programming. SC's chairman, Daniel Haimovic, began spending summers there with his young children and sought similar family-friendly facilities near his Brooklyn Heights home. Finding indoor tennis space in New York City is difficult because tennis needs large, high-ceilinged column-free expanses, while golf simulators have occupied much discounted pandemic-era space. Demand for racquet-sport courts, especially pickleball, is growing. SC opened a four-court facility in the Mercantile Exchange pit and identified the vacant athletic club at the old Hotel St. George as a potential site.
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