Stonegate Park on Whirlaway Drive has six pickleball courts. Wood Oaks Green on Sanders Road has eight tennis courts, and four of them can be used for pickleball. Williamsburg Square on Lee Road adds two more. The Northbrook Park District says its outdoor athletic facilities normally run from "early-April until mid-October," so right about now those courts start their winter break.
So where does the game go next? Mostly indoors, and mostly to courts the Park District doesn't run. The newest courts in town sit inside private clubs, and the next ones are going into industrial buildings along Shermer Road. Village trustees are rezoning those buildings one application at a time.
The public indoor option is one gym with four courts
The Park District's indoor pickleball is based at the Techny Prairie Activity Center, or TPAC, at 180 Anets Drive. The gym has four pickleball courts. Open play is for ages 14 and up, holds up to 32 people, and rotates game by game when players are waiting. Some time slots are set aside for players 60 and older.
Do the math on that cap. Thirty-two players on four courts means sixteen on court and sixteen waiting when the gym is full, so a busy session is partly spent on the sideline. Walk-ins are first come, first served. Members get advertised open gym as part of their membership, and nonmembers can use a swipe pass. The District's 2026 gym page lists the daily fee at $7 for residents and $9 for nonresidents. An older TPAC pickleball page still shows $6 and $8, so check the price at the desk. Open gym times change monthly, and the current schedule is posted through the TPAC site.
Greenbriar Gym, at 1225 Greenbriar Lane, offers open gym year-round, and its facility page doesn't list a court count. The District's evening pickleball clinics meet at the Greenbriar School Complex.
Much of TPAC's fall court time is already booked. The Friday Night Pickleball Social Club runs 6 to 7:30 p.m. from September 4 through December 18, at $109 for residents and $139 for nonresidents. The Northbrook Pickleball Co-Ed League's intermediate and 60+ sections started in September and run into mid-December at $239 for residents and $299 for nonresidents. Every hour of league and social play is an hour those four courts aren't available for drop-in.
Most of the indoor courts in town are now private
Life Time North Shore opened at 1300 Techny Road on June 26, 2026. It's a 114,000-square-foot club with 28 pickleball courts, 18 indoors and 10 outdoors, plus indoor stadium-style seating for tournaments. That's 18 indoor courts against TPAC's four. A membership also covers the other Life Time clubs in the north suburbs, including Life Time Northbrook, Old Orchard, Evanston, Vernon Hills and Lake Zurich.
Glenbrook Pickle Club is the smaller, longer-running local option. Its site describes an indoor, year-round Northbrook facility with eight courts, open play, in-house leagues, drills and junior programs. A 2025 page from its parent company, Glenbrook Racquet Sports, says seven courts. The club's own current site says eight. You don't need a membership to play. Memberships for the 2026–27 season start at $89 a month or $899 a year. During Fall Session I, guest open play costs $10, with sessions every day of the week. Open play is managed rather than run on a paddle rack, so guests sign up ahead of time instead of just showing up. Tuesday nights from 8 to 10 bring a $45 "Tournament Night, Taco Tuesday" drop-in.
The same company runs Glenbrook Racquet Club for tennis and Glenbrook Paddle Club for platform tennis. The racquet club is at 1801 Janke Drive and has 10 indoor tennis courts.
Here's the winter lineup, using only the court counts the operators publish.
| Venue | Indoor pickleball courts | How a non-regular gets on court |
|---|---|---|
| TPAC, 180 Anets Drive | 4 | Walk-in open gym, daily fee or swipe pass |
| Greenbriar Gym, 1225 Greenbriar Lane | Not stated | Park District open gym and clinics |
| Glenbrook Pickle Club | 8 | $10 guest open play, registered ahead |
| Life Time North Shore, 1300 Techny Road | 18 | Club membership |
Shermer Road is where the next courts are going
The next racket club in town is going into a building that wasn't meant for sports. Proximo Padel is planned for 2985 Shermer Road. Village records list Kin Sports LLC as the applicant and intended operator, and the land is owned by the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East Diocese of North America. The Village's development tracker, last updated September 8, 2026, describes a high-end sports club with seven padel courts, six pickleball courts, a shop, a café and lounge areas. Sitework is underway.
The project has been in the works for a while. The Village Board gave it a preliminary review on May 28, 2024. The Plan Commission held its formal hearing on February 18, 2025, and recommended the zoning relief 8–0. At that hearing, the applicant estimated 12 to 16 months of construction. The project site still says "Sitework ongoing" and gives no opening date, so the club is unlikely to be open for this winter. Once it opens, its six pickleball courts alone will outnumber the four at TPAC. Northbrook currently has no open padel venue at all.
A little further down the road, Synergy Badminton wants to move into part of a vacant multi-tenant industrial building at 2775–2783 Shermer Road. The founder of Synergy Badminton Academy is Ben Lee. According to the Village minutes, the plan involves rehabilitating the 135,000-square-foot building for a badminton facility of about 35,000 square feet. Sources disagree on the size. The staff memo describes 16 to 17 courts, while Trustee Matt Cassidy's meeting notes describe an 11-court competition and training facility.
In his notes from the August 25 meeting, Cassidy explained why proposals like this keep landing on Shermer:
"The reality is that spaces like this are seeing decreasing demand for true industrial use, but increasing demand for other uses including athletic training and sports facilities. There are other properties around this one that have similarly become ICS-zoned and are used for athletic purposes, including a padel club and The Dugout."
The Dugout is at 1885 Holste Road. It's a baseball and softball training space with hitting tunnels, a pitching area and turf. Teams rent cages with a pitching machine for practice. The Plan Commission considered rezoning that property from industrial to ICS for a fitness training facility back in 2014. The rezoning path the Shermer Road proposals are following has been used in Northbrook for more than a decade.
What the Village is still weighing
A badminton hall can't just move into an empty industrial unit. Synergy's request needs three approvals. First, a Comprehensive Plan amendment from IWO, the General Industrial, Warehouse & Office designation, to ICS, the Industrial & Commercial Service designation. Second, rezoning from I-2 Light Industrial to ICS. Third, a special permit for a physical fitness facility larger than 2,500 square feet.
On August 25, 2026, the Village Board voted 6–0 to send the request to the Plan Commission. Trustees spoke in favor of the application but raised concerns about what ICS zoning could allow for other tenants down the road. Cassidy wrote that several trustees also want the applicant to plan carefully for traffic and parking, since some of its customers would be children. As of early October, no Plan Commission hearing date has been reported.
Rezoning a whole building for one tenant opens it to every use ICS allows, including uses that have nothing to do with sports, and that question will follow every proposal like this. The padel club already made it through. The badminton facility is the next test.
The fall clinic calendar, if you'd rather learn indoors
The Park District's fall clinics start the week of October 26. Registration runs through the pickleball program page using these activity numbers:
- Beginner, #29520, TPAC, 9 to 10 a.m., October 26 through December 14, $185 resident and $235 nonresident.
- Beginner, #29521, Greenbriar, 7:15 to 8:15 p.m., same dates, $139 resident and $175 nonresident.
- Intermediate, #29495, Greenbriar, 8:15 to 9:15 p.m., October 26 through December 14, $139 resident and $175 nonresident.
- Intermediate, #29525, TPAC, 7:15 to 8:15 p.m., October 29 through December 17, $165 resident and $209 nonresident.
- Advanced, #29518, TPAC, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., November 1 through December 20, $209 resident and $265 nonresident.
The evening Greenbriar sections are the cheapest on the list, at $139 for residents compared with $185 for the morning beginner clinic at TPAC. The District isn't listing any upcoming pickleball tournaments right now.
At The JG Group, we keep an eye on Shermer Road filings because they change how people use that part of town on a weeknight. If you'd like to talk through what a new club or a rezoned building nearby could mean for a home you own or are thinking about buying, Request a Free Consultation and we'll walk through it with you.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
