Larry Bussey did not set out to become a pickleball developer. He owned a building on 17th Street and figured it would make a decent set of condos, until the numbers on that plan stopped working. He picked up a paddle in 2023, the way half of Columbus seems to have, and started thinking about his empty building differently. "So I was thinking, you know, maybe that building on 17th street would be a good indoor pickleball court," he told a local TV crew earlier this month. Crews are now painting the floors. Four indoor courts and four outdoor courts are set to open this October.
Compare that timeline to the project everyone in Columbus has actually heard about: the 28-court complex breaking ground on 3rd Avenue in Uptown, more than four years in the making, backed by city officials, grant funders, and the Columbus, Ga. Pickleball Association. It's the bigger vision by a wide margin. It's also the one whose original target of an early 2026 opening has already come and gone without the kind of grand-opening coverage that follows a project this size.
That gap between the flagship and the upstart is the real story here, and it says something about how court time in this city is actually going to shake out this fall.
The 45-Minute Round Trip That Explains Everything
None of this happens without a supply problem that's been building for years. Columbus resident David Theriault put it plainly when Uptown's project broke ground last August: "We have to drive 45 minutes to Opelika to play in their facility, which is covered courts." Monday-night regulars at Cooper Creek know the same frustration from the other direction. No roof means no play once the rain starts, and a session there got cut short by weather the same week Theriault was talking about the long drive east.
A year later, the complaints haven't changed much. In the same week Bussey's Midtown project made news, another Columbus resident, Marv West, offered a line that captures where things stand better than any court count could:
"People are going over to Phenix City to play. It's just nice we are going to have a court facility here."
Princeton Floyd, another local player quoted in that story, described the same scramble: "It's hard to find empty pickleball courts because there's such a high demand for it." That's not a complaint about one facility being slow. It's a description of a valley-wide shortage, with players crossing the Chattahoochee in both directions just to find an open court. The Columbus, Ga. Pickleball Association points to national participation growth of nearly 40 percent over three years as part of why they consider Georgia one of the fastest-growing markets for the sport, and nothing about the local scramble contradicts that.
The Flagship: 28 Courts on 3rd Avenue
The Uptown project is the one built to fix the shortage at scale. Lance Tankersley, president of the Columbus, Ga. Pickleball Association, laid out the plan when demolition started last August: "28 courts, 16 covered, six outside courts, and then two championship courts." That covered-court count matters directly to the Theriault problem. It's the reason players have been driving to Opelika in the first place.
The project has taken more than four years to reach groundbreaking, funded through a mix of donations, grants, and city support rather than a single check. Once finished, the facility gets handed over to the city, which keeps it public and free to use rather than turning it into a membership club. Organizers commissioned a Columbus State University study projecting more than $11 million in economic impact and over 60 jobs during construction, the kind of number that made sense of the multi-year fundraising push and the city's willingness to put its name behind the site. Tankersley has also described the location as bookending Uptown with the baseball stadium at the opposite end, deliberately anchoring the far side of the district rather than tucking courts into leftover space.
That's a lot of infrastructure to stand up. It's also, by design, not something that happens fast.
The Upstart: Eight Courts on 17th Street
Bussey's project skipped almost all of that. No multi-year fundraising campaign, no city partnership, no economic-impact study commissioned in advance. Just a building that wasn't working as condos and an owner who'd started playing pickleball himself. Jason Barbara, identified as associated with the facility, said the goal is straightforward: a venue for tournaments that pulls players from across the valley, not just from Columbus proper.
Eight courts is a fraction of Uptown's 28. But eight courts with a real October date on them is worth more to a player deciding where to spend a Saturday morning right now than 28 courts with a timeline that's already slipped past its own goal.
Two Different Bets on the Same Shortage
Here's what the contrast actually tells a Columbus resident planning around this fall's court schedule. The public model and the private model are solving the identical shortage with opposite tools. Uptown's approach required consensus among city officials, grant funders, and a nonprofit association, which is exactly why it delivers 16 covered courts and lasting public access, and exactly why it takes years to open. Midtown's approach required one owner deciding his empty building had a better use, which is why it can go from idea to ribbon-cutting without a single public hearing or a multi-year fundraising campaign, and why it tops out at eight courts run as a private business rather than a free public amenity.
Neither model is wrong. But if you're the player currently driving to Phenix City on a Tuesday night because Cooper Creek is full, the practical reality is that the smaller, privately built option is likely to have your name on a court reservation before the larger, publicly built one finishes catching up to its own early-2026 promise. That's worth knowing before you circle a date on the calendar for either one.
If you want to track the Uptown project's actual progress rather than guess at it, the Columbus, Ga. Pickleball Association posts updates directly, and it's a better source than secondhand chatter at the courts. For the Midtown facility, October is the number to watch, and the building on 17th Street is easy enough to drive past if you want to see the floors get painted yourself.
Either way, the shortage that sent players to Opelika and Phenix City for the past few years is finally getting real answers on both ends of town. It just turns out the smaller answer might arrive first.
Following what's changing in Columbus, court by court and block by block, is part of how Ron Jones stays useful to clients long before they're ready to buy or sell here. If you're weighing a move to this side of the Chattahoochee Valley, or just want a local read on where a neighborhood is headed, schedule a free consultation and get the kind of on-the-ground detail you won't find in a listing description.
