PB(973) Opens in Flanders, Bringing Six Indoor Pickleball Courts to Morris County
Flanders has its own indoor pickleball club. PB(973) opened at 90 Bartley Flanders Road on July 11, cutting the ribbon at 1:30 in the afternoon in front of a crowd that included local and state officials, then throwing the doors open for food, music and open play the rest of the day. The club occupies roughly 15,000 square feet in the ShopRite-anchored center off Route 206, a space that had been sitting empty and now fills the last vacancy in the 73,000-square-foot property. Players who had been circling the project for months got their first look during a free open play stretch from July 1 through July 14, and by opening weekend the place already had regulars.
What they found inside is a facility built with more care than most conversions of retail space. There are six championship Deco Turf courts on a ten-layer surface system, lit to 1,900 lux, which is tournament-level brightness and a noticeable difference if you have ever squinted through a rec game under warehouse lighting. Each court has its own private entrance, two cameras, a 65-inch screen and Push It video technology, so you can pull up a rally and actually see what your third shot did. Thirty-six acoustic ceiling baffles handle the sound problem that plagues indoor pickleball, cutting the echo and the clatter from the next court over. The lounge side of the building leans social: an 85-inch TV, ping pong tables, a pool table and an automatic mahjong table, plus space for canasta. The tagline the club has been running with, "Play the Code," fits the idea of a place people stay at after their court time ends.
Owners Tony Corbo, Jennifer Rogers, and Scott Hagel have been clear that the club is meant for everybody who wants to play, not only the 4.0-and-up crowd. The programming reflects that. This summer PB(973) launched free adult clinics aimed at beginners, along with two free junior sessions: Dinkin Dinos for the youngest players and Competitive Edge for kids who want to compete. A $49-a-month Big Chill membership gives unlimited open play through the summer, which is a reasonable pitch in July when the outdoor courts turn into a griddle. The stated goal is a club where a first-timer and a tournament player can both find a game on the same afternoon, and where the social side of the sport gets as much room as the competitive side.
Anyone who has played in North Jersey over the past decade knows Tony's name. He spent years helping build Randolph Pickleball Center and the programs that grew there, back when pickleball in Morris County was still a handful of people taping lines on tennis courts. That work turned into something bigger than one facility. He has quietly mentored other owners over the years who started their own pickleball businesses, among them Aaron Reznik and Matt Slowinski of Montclair Pickleball. It is a small community, and Tony has been one of the people making it larger for a long time. Seeing him open a club of his own, with Jennifer, reads less like a new business and more like the next logical step.
The level of turnout at the ribbon cutting said something too. Getting town and state officials to show up for a pickleball opening would have been unthinkable a few years ago, and the club noted as much on the way in. PB(973) is at 90 Bartley Flanders Road in Flanders, with membership and program details on their website. For players in the Route 206 corridor who have been driving thirty minutes for indoor court time, the trip just got a lot shorter.
