Louisville plans to welcome Colorado’s biggest indoor pickleball center in the first three months of 2025, when Relish Food Hall and Pickleball is slated to open with 80,000 square feet in the former Sam’s Club building at 550 McCaslin Blvd.
The new business is expected to feature 20 indoor pickleball courts, two outdoor courts, a food hall with eight different restaurants and plenty of space for the community to gather, founder Tory Leggat and Jeff Youngstrom say. The two have been working for four years to open the center, which is next to Ascent Church. The Relish website also lists Hillier Collins as a founder.
Leggat and Youngstrom both say they’re not the strongest pickleball players. However, they both agree that their focus on the center is not just creating a place to play, but a place to bring people together and create community.
Youngstrom credits pickleball’s popularity to how accessible and conversational the game is. Leggat added that pickleball is a great way to get to meet new people.
Ben Lampert, pickleball director at Relish, said pickleball is a paddle sport that can be placed as singles or doubles on a court about half the size of a tennis court. He describes the sport as a mix of tennis, badminton and ping pong.
Lampert joked that there is no need for for people to use dating apps when it is easy to meet new people by playing pickleball. He explained that during pandemic lockdowns, people were itching for a way to go outside and socialize, which he thinks helped pickleball become popular.
“It’s a great way to be in the moment,” Lampert said, “There is no multi-tasking or sitting around, and there’s no phones or screens.”
The smaller court forces players to be closer together physically and encourages people to talk and get to know each other. Lampert said he always finds himself laughing while playing.
Originally, when Youngstrom and Leggat had the idea to create a community gathering place, they thought about creating a volleyball or basketball center. But Leggat said the local community convinced them pickleball was popular enough to fill the entire space.
“The accessibility, the social part, intergenerationality, it’s all the stuff we wanted for a project to work on and what we wanted for the community,” Leggat said.
Youngstrom said it can often be hard to find a place to gather with friends and family outside of the home. He hopes Relish becomes the go-to place for community-building.
“You don’t have to be obsessed with pickleball to come here, but you can be,” Leggat said.
Youngstrom said that as a kid, it was easy for him to have the confidence to join a group of strangers and start playing together. That confidence tends to fade in adulthood, Youngstrom said, but he wants to make sure no one at Relish feels intimidated by the sport.
Relish will have membership options and drop-ins, but Leggat and Youngstrom do not intend to exclude anyone. As pickleball is an easy sport to pick-up, they intend to welcome any and all to the courts.
Not only does pickleball forge community, but food does too, the founders said. While the place will have both indoor and outdoor courts, a lot of it has been left open for people to hold meetings, parties or get a drink with friends.
More information about Relish is at visitrelish.com.
