Pensacola may get dedicated indoor pickleball courts. Here's the scoop on Project Pickle:

The city of Pensacola may repurpose a warehouse at the Port of Pensacola into courts for pickleball and other indoor sports.

Mayor Grover Robinson announced the initiative, "Project Pickle," during a regular weekly press conference at City Hall on Monday morning.

"We've got a prospect that would like us to take that building outside of the fence line and be able to access it and use it for indoor court facilities (and turn it) into a pickleball facility," Robinson said at the press conference.

"It would be run, in a sense, very much like Roger Scott, where the building is ours but the operations will be run by another company. They actually, at this time, would be putting in the infrastructure on the interior of it and we will be coming forward, hopefully, in December with a lease."

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Deputy City Administrator Amy Miller said state law around port lease negotiations prevented city officials from naming the potential tenant Monday, but said more details would likely be presented Nov. 7 during a preliminary City Council discussion of the lease terms.

The facility under discussion is known as Warehouse 4 and is situated on the port's outskirts near the parking lot for the ferry terminal.

Discussing the planned use of the space, Miller said, "It's basically an indoor sports tournament facility. The warehouse is 48,000 square feet and their plan calls for a little bit of an addition onto that as well, and it will be able to handle pickleball, basketball, volleyball (and indoor soccer)."

Pickleball is a fast-growing sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton and ping-pong. It is immensely popular because it is easy to learn, accessible to people of all ages and fitness conditions, and is a highly social activity with a relatively low barrier to entry.

Miller said while the facility operator would likely sell memberships to the public, its main financial strategy would be attracting sports leagues and organizations to host tournaments in the space.

Robinson quickly added, "At the same time, it gives us an amenity. While they certainly have plans to host these tournaments, they want at the same time to have a public amenity like the Roger Scott for pickleball. If you want to play it, they'll have it ... so from this standpoint, rather than us having to take money to create a new athletic community, we're actually partnering with somebody else to help bring it into a building that we knew we didn't really have a use for and really reactivate it."

The warehouse is currently used as a general storage area for port customers.

"This is a warehouse that's fairly old, has not really been utilized very much and has some challenges on the flooring, which again, they're going to figure all this out," Robinson said of the prospective tenant.

Miller said the city has been eyeing the warehouse for "adaptive reuse" for awhile, noting the physical design of the building itself is interesting and its location is fairly optimal.

"It can be taken out the fence line very easily and we've had it tagged for some time for reuse that's consistent with the ferry terminal, the new hotel that is supposed to go in over there, and that whole area —that frankly always was kind of a dead zone on the waterfront — really becoming an activated area," Miller said.

Robinson said after hearing an initial presentation on the project next week, the council will likely vote on whether to approve the lease in December.

"I think it's an opportunity for us to expand and have different operations here, and obviously pickleball is growing fast all over the country," Robinson said. "And the opportunity to now have a facility in the city that does that, I think, will be very good."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pickleball in Pensacola: Port of Pensacola warehouse may be leased