As Montclair Local reported, Rebecca Ryan grew up thirty minutes from Wayne, played tennis as a kid, picked up pickleball at Caldwell University, and by 2019 was playing the U.S. Open in Naples. She spent years on the pro circuit and coaching in Texas and Florida before a Google search brought her back to New Jersey. The job that pulled her home: running the pickleball director's chair at a brand new 18-court facility built into the top floor of an office building next to Willowbrook Mall.
That detail is the whole story in miniature. Two years ago, Wayne had no dedicated indoor pickleball infrastructure to speak of. Now it has an indoor facility alongside two outdoor options, and they didn't arrive as one operator's expansion plan. They arrived from three different directions on different timelines, and each one answers to a different kind of player.
The Top Floor Nobody Expected
SPORTIME Pickleball Wayne opened its doors over the weekend of September 5 through 7, 2025, after a short soft opening earlier that week. The facility sits at 77 Willowbrook Boulevard, on the top floor of Willowbrook Plaza, in roughly 50,000 square feet that used to be office space. Cushman & Wakefield brokered the lease on Sportime's side, and RIPCO Real Estate represented landlord Kimco Realty. The deal had been in motion since at least mid-2024, part of a broader build-out of dedicated pickleball clubs Sportime has been opening across New York and New Jersey.
What got built out is not a converted gym with some tape on the floor. The club has 18 climate-controlled indoor courts, a stadium court, a practice wall for drilling, three private event rooms, courtside player lounges, locker rooms, a pro shop, and a small café for coffee and snacks between games. It's open 365 days a year, which matters in a region where outdoor courts sit under snow or ice for a good stretch of winter.
Ryan runs the programming: adult and junior clinics, open play sessions rated by skill level, leagues, and a junior team pickleball track heading into its 2026-27 season. She's described her coaching approach as wanting players to understand why they're hitting a shot, not just whether they won the point, and she's said her bigger goal is helping people find community through the sport.
Ryan told Montclair Local, "I want people to find their community here."
Access here runs on a membership model layered with hourly court rentals, plus seasonal and drop-in rates that get discounted in the summer months. Reviewers have pointed to the roughly $20 monthly membership fee as a good deal once you factor in the free member events the club runs. This is the paid, serious-player tier: climate control, coaching from someone who's actually played professionally, and courts you can reserve in advance instead of hoping one opens up.
The Free Courts the Town Already Built
Here's the part that gets missed when people talk about Wayne's pickleball moment as a Sportime story. Before the ribbon was cut at Willowbrook Plaza, the township had already added three outdoor pickleball courts at Dave Waks Memorial Park, a public park on Barbour Pond Drive that also has a children's playground, a field house, lighted multi-use turf fields, a model airplane flying area, and a paved walking path. Wayne Mayor Christopher Vergano confirmed the timing directly when Sportime's plans became public: the municipality had opened those courts in the year before the private facility arrived.
That sequencing matters. This wasn't the town reacting to a corporate build-out or trying to keep pace with a private amenity. Wayne's parks department was already investing in outdoor pickleball infrastructure on its own timeline, for residents who just want to show up with a paddle and play for free. No membership, no court reservation app, no monthly fee. It's the least glamorous tier and also the one that costs a resident nothing.
The Lake Club Courts That Predate the Boom
The third tier is older than either of the other two and runs on a completely different logic: private lake community membership. Packanack Lake & Tennis Club, at 9 Osborne Terrace near the Packanack Fire House, has four dedicated outdoor courts with permanent lines and nets, along with restrooms and water access, open to lake members and their guests. Its reach extends past Wayne's own borders, drawing players from as far as North Haledon, Pequannock, Pompton Plains, and Pompton Lakes.
This club didn't build pickleball courts because of a national boom. It's an outgrowth of the lake association that has organized recreation around Packanack Lake for decades, the same association that maintains the lake itself, the shared docks, and the summer swim programs. Access runs through lake community membership rather than a credit card, which makes this tier fundamentally different from a drop-in public court or a paid commercial club. You're not renting court time. You're a member of a community that happens to have courts.
What the Three Tiers Actually Look Like Side by Side
| Where to Play | Courts | Access | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dave Waks Memorial Park | 3 outdoor courts | Free, no membership | Casual, drop-in play |
| Packanack Lake & Tennis Club | 4 outdoor courts | Lake community membership | Packanack-area residents already inside that membership structure |
| SPORTIME Pickleball Wayne | 18 indoor courts plus a stadium court | Paid membership and court rental | Year-round, climate-controlled play, coaching, leagues |
How Wayne's Pickleball Options Took Shape
Sportime's own framing of the moment points to something bigger than one lease deal: pickleball is one of the fastest growing sports in the country, easy to pick up at almost any age, and social in a way that keeps people coming back. That growth curve is national. What made Wayne the site for a regional-scale facility was more specific. Willowbrook Mall already pulls retail traffic from across Passaic and Bergen counties, and an underused office floor next door gave Sportime the ceiling height and floor plan to fit 18 regulation courts without new construction. The company's leadership has talked about the ambition here directly: creating clubs where neighbors can connect and families can play together, not just where courts happen to exist.
Meanwhile the township's own recreation planning was already moving in the same direction, independent of what any private operator was doing a few miles away. And the lake club was never part of this recent story at all. It's simply still there, still running on membership, still serving the residents who were already inside that system before pickleball had a national moment.
Put together, what looks like a single "Wayne has pickleball now" headline is actually two recent decisions made by two separate parties, alongside a longstanding lake-club option. A private national operator bet on the mall corridor. The township kept building the outdoor recreation it had already planned. And the lake association kept doing what it's always done.
For a Wayne resident deciding where to actually play tonight, that means the real question isn't which court is "best." It's which access model fits how you already live. Walk-up and free at Dave Waks Field. Membership through the lake community if you're already part of it. Or a reservation and a monthly fee at Willowbrook Plaza if you want climate control, coaching from a former New Jersey number one, and a court that's guaranteed to be open in February.
Anthony Jordan keeps a close eye on what's actually changing in Wayne, from new courts to new construction, because that's the kind of detail that only shows up when you're paying attention to the town day to day. If you want that same level of read on a specific street, a specific home, or what's happening in your corner of Wayne, reach out and start the conversation.
