Generation To Generation, Podiatry To Pickleball

The story of the proposed indoor pickleball facility slated to spring forth from a stretch of asphalt in Westville begins, in a way, in 1957, when Harrison Blume’s grandfather first hung a podiatry shingle on Blake Street.

It’s unlikely that Dr. James Blume heard much of the trendy racket sport over the course of his six decades attending to all manner of foot maladies suffered by Westville Villagers. 

While pickleball was created in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, only over the last decade has it skyrocketed in popularity. It’s become the nation’s fastest-growing sport, sitting somewhere between tennis and ping pong. It crested in 2022 at 36.5 million players across the country — with no fewer than 544 picklers descending on New Haven for a tournament in April.

But Dr. Blume setting up shop at 506 Blake St. those decades ago, and his son Peter following in the podiatry family business thereafter, meant that Harrison — who was born in 2001 — was intimately familiar with Westville Village as he grew up nearby in Woodbridge.

Harrison discovered pickleball five years ago. And that love of the tennis-adjacent game has alighted in him a missionary zeal to spread the word, and build the planned new indoor courts, right across the street from where his grandfather first hung that shingle.

“I got hooked,” said Blume, president of Pickleville CT and the face of the proposed new indoor pickleball facility, on a recent afternoon at Pistachio Cafe, when talking about pickleball. ​“It’s fun, it’s social, it’s a great workout, and anyone can play.”

The facility will undergo a full site plan review before the City Plan Commission on Wednesday.

The site is across the street from the 500 Blake St. development, which is under construction. It’s adjacent to a municipal parking lot and the long-vacant Church of Scientology-owned former Hallock’s building. 

Blume said the facility will be a custom-fabricated building. He expects it to be completed in the spring. 

Ranging 216 feet along Valley Street, from midway across the parking lot to the end, it will stand 24 feet high outside and 22 feet inside, with West Rock rising as the backdrop. 

Inside, there will be an open floor plan, with three courts and four people playing at a time. There are plans for a smoothie bar and a coffee bar, and a space with tables and benches where, Blume said, ​“people can hang out all day and work on their computers during breaks.” 

There will be no memberships, only charges for hourly court rentals. 

Reached for a telephone interview, local attorney Ben Trachten, who’s representing Pickleville CT, said the proposed structure ​“is putting unused vacant land to productive use as opposed to demolishing housing to make way for a recreation facility.”

The facility is the culmination of a long journey for the Amity High School graduate, who called himself ​“an entrepreneur with a passion for building.” 

Blume, fresh off a degree in information management and entrepreneurship from Syracuse, said he was down south during the winter when he realized there were few places to play pickleball in the northeast.

“The closest spot was about 40 minutes away in Oxford, and they were always busy and you couldn’t get in there,” he said.

Blume knew Westville Village. He knew the parking lot on Blake and Valley directly across from the Blume podiatry clinic. He knew there was a sizeable pickleball community in New Haven with, he said, ​“hundreds of people always looking for places to play.” A light bulb went on in his head.

For months, he absorbed everything he could on building a pickleball facility. He attended pickleball expos, traveled the northeast to determine which structure would make the best sense for Westville. ​“I saw some from the ground up, but mostly they’re all refit, and when you refit a building, you have to work around existing conditions,” he said. 

The more he learned, the more enthused he grew about a possible Westville site. ​“This will be the first city location in Connecticut, which is definitely the biggest hurdle because the other indoor facilities are mostly buried in industrial parks or inside malls,” he said. 

“This is better, because it’s a neighborhood, it’s going to be community-based, there’s going to be a face, I’m going to be the face,” he said. ​“There’s going to be local pros, lessons, clinics, community outreach, fundraisers. We’re coordinating with Racquet Koop to sell paddles and equipment.”

Chris Gaudreau, owner of Racquet Koop on Whalley Avenue and a pickleball enthusiast, said the indoor facility was a natural progression from the local courts at Edgewood Park.

“It’s insane how fast the sport is growing, and that’s something you see at the park,” he said. ​“Having a place to play indoors is huge, because there’s going to be no weather issues whether it’s oppressively hot or cold and icy.” 

Will Meng, a top pickler in New Haven and certified coach at Guilford’s Blaze Pickle, located in a former Walmart, had a similar take.

“Pickleball is just so easy to play, and it’s social,” he said. ​“On a tennis court, you’re 50 feet away from the other person across the net. In pickleball, you’re only 14 feet away for the most part.” 

That kind of social interaction, he said, is a reason that more people are motivated to stay with it, as opposed to other forms of exercise.

Regarding the concerns raised by neighbors at the city’s October Board of Zoning Appeals meeting about the pickleball plan’s noise and traffic impacts, Blume said noise is a non-issue because the building will be fully insulated. As for the traffic, he cited the installation of new traffic lights on Blake and Valley, as well as the new traffic patterns with the 500 Blake St. development. 

He sees himself as simply meeting a need.

“There’s already a huge pickleball following, and I want everyone to be able to play, so there’s not going to be crazy prices,” he said. ​“I want this to become a positive force in the community.”