Nearly a year after its opening, Pickles at Forté is expanding, soon adding more courts for Downtown Honolulu’s pickleball enthusiasts.
The Pickle Party, a grand opening of eight new courts on the second floor, is set for 5 to 9 p.m. Nov. 14, in line with the inaugural DoHo Night Market, taking place at the same time at Fort Street Mall.
Pickles at Forté, the first air conditioned, indoor pickleball and social club in Downtown Honolulu, opened in January on the ground floor of 1032 Fort Street Mall. The space was formerly occupied by Walmart, which had been vacant since the retailer closed that location in early 2023.
It's also part of a larger redevelopment plan in the works by Avalon Group, a Downtown-based full-service real estate development, consulting and sales company that acquired the property in February 2024 for $38.25 million.
“This was just in response to massive demand that we’ve seen,” Robby Kelley, executive vice president for Avalon, told Aloha State Daily Friday. “Since we opened nearly a year ago now, membership for Pickles has grown to really where we’re at capacity with our court utilization. We were hurrying as much as possible to get some additional courts open to alleviate that capacity. Now we have more courts available. [It] gives us the ability to host more community events, more tournaments and just [have] more times available for our members.”
According to Kelley, 1,700 people initially signed up to play in its early weeks, but Pickles at Forté now has approximately 400 members and they’re looking to expand membership to 800 to 1,000.
Some membership specials will soon be available, including an upcoming BOGO promotion where people who sign up for a month will get a second month free, he says.
“Throughout this whole year, I’ve just been continually amazed at the level of interest in pickleball,” Kelley says. “[I’m] always a little incredulous when I go there on a Tuesday at 11 a.m. and I see all the courts are packed.”
The second phase of the redevelopment initially called for approximately 10 pickleball courts on the second floor as well as a restaurant, full locker rooms and other amenities. Kelley said Friday, however, that the developer is delaying the upstairs restaurant concept for a bit, focusing on pickleball and ground-floor retail, as well as looking at plans to potentially build about 100 units of workforce rental housing on top of the existing Walmart building. That effort is still in the planning stages, he noted.
It's a “continuum of continuing to improve the building one step at a time.”
Pickles at Forté expanded upon its initial offerings earlier this year, welcoming a sports shop, Teapresso Bar and a golf simulator.
Kelley says the golf simulator is up, running and available to both members and non-members. A special golf membership also has recently launched.
Kelley noted, too, that Aloha Creamery now has a kiosk offering ice cream within Pickles as well.
“It’s really been a success for us so far doing exactly what we’ve wanted it to [do], which was to really help build a community and bring life to Downtown,” Kelley says. “… It is starting to do what we wanted, to change the character of the block there, and that’s just going to continue as we get more and more open.”
Pickleball is a popular pastime in the Islands. A study conducted by PodPlay Pickleball Business Guide, a pickleball tech company, found that Hawai‘i has the third highest density of pickleball courts in the U.S., ASD reported in June.
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Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
