From Wall Street to the Pickleball Court: Bachmore Opens Peconic Pickleball in Riverhead

A Wall Street lawyer from Bayport recently stepped to the line and served an ace by unveiling plans to open the first and only dedicated indoor pickleball club on the East End — Peconic Pickleball, in Riverhead.

Located in the former Kmart building on Old Country Road, Peconic Pickleball will serve an area where the sport’s popularity has been exploding but its presence is mostly limited to a handful of outdoor courts here and there.

Owner Peter Bachmore’s vision for the club is to create a home for all levels of pickleball players, from first-timers to serious amateur competitors, and maybe even some major league action, and to do so in a highly social atmosphere.

“I started thinking, this could be a really good thing for the community. We’re open to working with local schools to get students playing, to hosting community leagues and even special events,” Bachmore said. “It’s going to be more than a sports facility.”

If all goes according to Bachmore’s plan, Peconic Pickleball will have nine courts, at least one of which will be a featured or “center court” with space enough for bleachers to surround it for tournament championship games and exhibitions.

The space also will include a pro shop and lounge and a full-service bar and a snack bar serving beer, wine and liquor and appetizers, sandwiches and salads and burgers, among other things.

“We really want to make this a cool, fun community experience,” Bachmore said in a recent interview. “My goal is for this to be a place people want to come to and hang out at before and after they play, to watch tournaments and have events.”

While Peconic Pickleball will offer membership packages, “it won’t be an exclusive type of place.” There will be walk-ins and online reservations for courts and open play. Groups will be able to host events there, as well.

Scott Green, a professional pickleball instructor and owner of Around the Post Pickleball in Hampton Bays, is working with Bachmore to design the layout of the courts and to provide the club’s lessons and clinics. He is set to be the club’s resident pro.

“I think it’s gonna be fabulous. It’s literally the talk of the pickleball world out here right now — and that world, let me tell you, is exploding,” Green said. “I taught 450 people how to play on outdoor courts last year alone … and my phone rings off the hook, daily.”

As of now, the only places to play pickleball east of Sayville are a few semi-dedicated courts at Hampton Bays High School and five indoor courts at Southampton Youth Services in Southampton Village, Green said. There are usually twice as many people waiting to play as the courts can accommodate, he added.

Even if pickleball’s popularity stopped growing tomorrow — which Green highly doubts will happen — he said there are so many people already playing that the need for clubs like Peconic Pickleball would persist.

“The only question is, where are they gonna play.”

Bachmore said he was introduced to pickleball by his brother-in-law, a tennis pro at a club outside of Washington, D.C., about two years ago. He played a few games, enjoyed it, then started doing some research on the skyrocketing success of the game nationwide.

Next, he began talking to some local friends in Bayport and poking around to see what the East End’s pickleball landscape looked like.

Rather than focus on outdoors courts, which would have a limited season of use, Bachmore focused his burgeoning plan on opening an indoor pickleball club. He briefly considered building one but soon realized the hurdles to such a project on the East End were likely too high and too numerous to make good sense.

Instead, he started looking at warehouses and other large-scale buildings that would accommodate an indoor sport.

Things moved quickly from there. First, a business plan, then a campaign to bring on some 12 investors, who are mostly the parents of Bachmore’s son’s friends, he said. They had been hearing about Bachmore’s idea while standing on the sidelines during baseball and football practice and wanted to get in on it.

Soon, Bachmore’s real estate agent, Jason Rubinstein of Pine Barrens Realty, suggested the old vacant Kmart. After talking with the building’s owners about his hopes for the space, a deal was made that has Bachmore’s company, Big Batch Enterprises, leasing about 30,000 square feet of the building for 15 years. The space, carved out in an L-shape, will be sectioned off from the rest of the building and a separate entrance will be created, Bachmore said.

Just a few months ago, Bachmore went to the Riverhead Town Planning Board, informally, and pitched his idea — he’d likely need some zoning or other regulatory permissions.

“I think one of the [members] heard me out and said, ‘Okay, when can you open?’” Bachmore remembers. “I took that as a pretty good sign.”

In a perfect world, Bachmore would like to open Peconic Pickleball on Labor Day weekend, but, in reality, he says it might take an extra month to welcome the first players courtside. Whenever it happens, it will likely be with a tournament of some kind.

For now, Bachmore is waiting for the Kmart to be divided and made ready for him to take over so he can get architectural plans drawn up and construction underway. While that is happening, Bachmore intends to have a bar and grill, kitchen, office, and pro shop constructed offsite out of recycled shipping containers “to embrace an industrial kind of look and feel.”

Bachmore said he is excited about putting to use all the features the old Kmart offers his new business — ample physical space, commercial and food and beverage zoning (there was a Little Caesar’s inside the Kmart before it closed, which also meant there is some leftover infrastructure including a grease trap for spent frying oil), and a big parking lot.

“Finding a place like this, which might not seem an obvious choice, made the barrier to entry of this project infinitely lower,” Bachmore said. “This could be part of a wave of new businesses giving these vacant box stores new life.”

Rubinstein said it wasn’t easy finding Peconic Pickleball a home. Two years of searching and beating the bushes for leads led to dead-ends and at least one rejection from the owner of a similar site.

“I hope this goes to show what being a little creative and open-minded can do,” he said.