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— Specialty · Sports & Recreational Real Estate

Domes, racquet clubs, and industrial conversions for tenants most buildings do not fit.

Sports and recreation is now one of the fastest-growing uses competing for Canadian infill industrial space, and one of the least understood by the people leasing it. Clear height, column spacing and parking decide these deals long before rent does.

— Practice Thesis

How we work in sports & recreational real estate.

The participation numbers are not a fad and they have already landed on real estate. Pickleball Canada counted roughly 1.80 million players in its May 2026 survey, up from about one million in 2022, with 702,000 in Ontario alone. Padel court counts rose 240 per cent worldwide between 2021 and 2024. Demand at that scale has to go somewhere indoors, in a country with a five-month winter, and it is going into infill industrial and vacated big-box retail.

What makes this a specialty rather than an industrial deal with an unusual tenant is that most buildings do not work. Padel needs 24 feet of clear height for regulation play. Column spacing under roughly 18 feet rules a building out no matter how the square footage reads. Operators want 15,000 square feet at minimum and tend to settle around 40,000. Parking ratios written for warehousing fail immediately against a facility running league nights. A broker who cannot answer those questions before a site visit wastes everyone a month.

The other half of the work is the covenant. Landlords remember recreational tenants defaulting through COVID, and they are right to. What has changed is that the better operators now arrive with bank and institutional financing, pay above market rent, and sink serious capital into a fit-out they cannot take with them, at roughly forty thousand dollars a padel court before anything else. That changes the risk profile, but only if someone underwrites the operator honestly rather than selling the growth story. We work private facilities in Ontario and Alberta and we say no to a lot of them.

— Market Intelligence

The numbers that actually matter.

— Canadians Playing Pickleball
1.80M
Pickleball Canada, May 2026 survey
— Ontario Players
702,000
Largest provincial base in Canada
— Padel Clear Height
24'
Regulation minimum, rules out most stock
— Announced Club Space Demand
2.6M sf
One operator, 65 Canadian clubs planned
— Currently Marketing

Active mandates in this practice.

No active mandates in this practice at the moment. Discreet inquiries always welcome.
— Common Questions

What clients ask us.

What counts as sports and recreation for your practice?
Anything where the customer comes to play. Indoor turf and domes, ice, racquet sports including padel and pickleball, fitness and training, climbing, gymnastics, golf simulators, aquatics. We do not work entertainment venues where the customer comes to watch or be entertained: cinemas, theatres, concert halls, casinos, arcades. Those underwrite on ticketing, programming and food and beverage rather than memberships and booked court hours, and they are a different business.
What building specifications actually matter?
Clear height first. Padel needs 24 feet for regulation play, indoor turf and volleyball more, pickleball less. Column spacing next: much under 18 feet and the court grid will not lay out, whatever the total area says. Then parking, because a facility running evening leagues turns over its lot in a way warehouse ratios never contemplated, and then power, make-up air and slab condition for the fit-out. Zoning and permitted use are the fourth gate, and in most Ontario and Alberta industrial zones recreational use is not as of right.
Do you work municipal and community recreation centres?
No. Public recreation infrastructure runs through municipal procurement and a different set of relationships, and we would be a worse advisor there than firms who do it daily. Our practice is private facilities only, in Ontario and Alberta.
How do you underwrite a recreational tenant covenant?
Sceptically, and it is the part of the mandate that takes longest. Recreational defaults through COVID were real and landlords have not forgotten them. We look at whether the operator has bank or institutional financing rather than founder capital, how much of the fit-out is unrecoverable if they leave, membership and booking revenue against the rent, and whether they run one destination site or a repeatable format. Operators who treat it as a business rather than a passion project are a materially different credit, and we will tell a landlord when a deal is the second kind.
What mandate sizes do you take?
Leasing from 20,000 square feet. Investment sales from $5 million. We work below those thresholds only for existing client relationships.
Discreet by default

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