Capital City Padel Club: DC's First Dedicated Padel Club
Capital City Padel Club: DC's First Dedicated Padel Club
Three outdoor courts at 633 Howard Road SE by Spring 2027 — and why it may not be the first padel court open in the District
Washington, DC has had padel ambitions for about two years and, as of today, exactly zero courts anyone can book. The wait finally has a name and a date attached to it.
A dedicated padel club is coming to the Bridge District
On October 15, developer Redbrick LMD and racquet-sports operator Tennis Central announced Capital City Padel Club — three outdoor courts at 633 Howard Road SE, in the Bridge District on the east bank of the Anacostia, opening in Spring 2027.
The announcement bills it as "Washington, D.C.'s first dedicated padel facility." That is a carefully built sentence, and it is worth taking apart, because in the District the first dedicated padel club and the first bookable padel court are shaping up to be two different openings in two different years.
The club will be run by Yann Auzoux and Olivia Ricchi, the husband-and-wife team behind Tennis Central, a DMV racquet-sports organization. Auzoux, its founder and chairman, pitched the project squarely at people who have never held a padel racquet: "whether you're eight or eighty, a seasoned athlete or a total beginner, there's a place for you on our courts." The stated programming plan runs to leagues, clinics, youth camps and community events.
What's planned at 633 Howard Road SE
Capital City Padel Club
Three courts will not make DC a padel capital — Padel Plant in Richmond already has five, and Epic Padel Tysons is building six across the river. What Capital City has instead is a site that solves padel's usual American problem, which is getting to it. The courts sit a five-minute walk up Howard Road from the Anacostia Metro on the Green Line, directly on the Riverwalk Trail, and one bridge crossing from Navy Yard and Nationals Park — one of the very few padel venues in the country you can reach on foot, by bike or by train without much thought. Drivers get parking validated at the facility for up to three hours.
The courts are lit for evening play, which matters a great deal for an outdoor facility in a city with a real winter and a 5pm sunset in December. The club is already enrolling founding members, with priority on introductory clinics, demo sessions and closed-door preview events along the river before the full schedule starts in 2027. Access is listed as commercial, so expect public court bookings alongside whatever membership tier launches — you should not need to join anything to play.
Courts: 3 | Type: Outdoor
The first-to-open question
The District currently has two padel projects on the board, five courts between them, and nothing open. The other project is at Hains Point, and until recently it looked like the one that would get there first.
East Potomac Racquet Sports
East Potomac Racquet Sports Partners won a 45-year lease from the National Park Service to rebuild the city's public racquet facility in East Potomac Park — a roughly $10 million phased renovation of the venue's 24 tennis courts, with new pickleball courts and two glass padel courts added. The facility closed in October 2024 and was targeting a phased reopening in summer 2026, which would have made Hains Point the first place in DC where any member of the public could book a padel court.
That target has come and gone. There is no confirmed opening as of late October 2026, and the park itself is now tangled up in something much bigger: a federal plan to close the Hains Point golf facility in mid-November for a championship-course rebuild estimated at 15 months, which is currently being contested in court. How much of that reaches the racquet center is not clear from the public record. What is clear is that summer 2026 is no longer a date to plan around.
So the precise answer to the question of DC's first padel is a two-parter. East Potomac is still first in line to put a bookable padel court inside the District, and it will be the public one. Capital City is the first purpose-built padel club, and the first with a date you can currently believe. Neither has a court open today, and we will move both listings the moment that changes.
Courts: 2 | Type: Outdoor
Where DC players go until then
Every playable court in the DMV is across a state line. Maryland has five open clubs and 13 courts; Virginia has four open clubs and 13 courts, with 13 more in the pipeline.
The closest courts to the District are in Maryland, not Virginia. Padel Social in Bethesda has three outdoor courts, and Glassbox Padel Club in College Park has four — both an easy drive from the city. For indoor play once the weather turns, Padel Up in Sterling has four courts, and Padel Plant in Richmond has five if you are making a trip of it. Our Maryland guide and Virginia guide cover all of them, and the DMV padel update tracks what is still under construction.
DC got a pro team before it got a court
One footnote that says something about how fast this is moving: Washington has a professional padel team before it has a single padel court. The Pro Padel League relocated its Matrix franchise from Arkansas to DC for the 2026 season, and the team spent the year playing in New York, Los Angeles and Mexico. It is not scheduled to host a match in the District until 2027 — by which point, if Capital City holds its date, there may finally be somewhere in the city to play.
For the longer view, our earlier reporting on padel coming to Washington DC covers the Hains Point award, and the Q4 2026 watchlist tracks what opens before the new year. Follow both DC projects on their listings and check availability across the region in the Padel Browser directory.
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