NewGen Racquet Club: Padel Coming to Lewis Center, OH

A Community Racquet Club Adds Padel

About 15 miles north of downtown Columbus, in the Delaware County suburb of Lewis Center, sits an indoor racquet club that already covers three sports and is quietly adding a fourth. NewGen Racquet Club opened in late 2024 with tennis, pickleball and badminton under one roof. One line on the club's website is the reason it now appears in our directory: "Padel coming soon!"

For a state that had almost no padel at all a few years ago, that line matters. Ohio now has six padel venues listed across Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus — and NewGen would be the first of them added to an established multi-sport community club rather than built as a standalone padel destination.

What NewGen Offers Today

Before padel arrives, NewGen is already a busy building. The facility sits on roughly 3.7 acres off Green Meadows Drive with five indoor-outdoor tennis courts, eight indoor pickleball courts and two indoor badminton courts, plus a welcome center with pro shop services, locker rooms with showers, lounge areas and a snack and beverage bar. It holds a 4.5-star Google rating across 42 reviews, and reviewers keep mentioning the height and lighting of the dome — a detail that turns out to matter a great deal for the sport it is about to add.

Where Padel Fits In

The club confirms padel is coming. It has not published an opening date. Area business and tourism listings go a step further, describing the facility as having "five indoor-outdoor tennis courts, eight indoor pickleball courts, two indoor badminton courts and soon five padel courts." Five would make NewGen one of the larger padel installations in the state — well beyond Cleveland Premier Padel's single court, and just behind Padel Square's six. NewGen has not confirmed that figure itself, so treat five as reported rather than official, and the timeline as open.

The indoor format is the encouraging part. Padel needs genuine overhead clearance — roughly 20 feet as a bare minimum, with serious clubs building to 26 feet (Padel Square) or 28 (Cleveland Premier Padel) so that lobs and smashes actually play the way the sport intends. A dome designed for indoor tennis generally clears that comfortably. NewGen has not published a ceiling height for its padel area, but the existing structure is the right kind of building to put courts inside.

Columbus's Growing Padel Scene

Columbus is currently Ohio's largest metro without an open padel court, and two separate projects are working on that from opposite directions.

Downtown, CLVB Padel is building the city's first dedicated padel club: four to six premium courts under a 28-foot roof with openable side doors, year-round heating, a pro shop, locker rooms and a bar. We covered CLVB Padel's plans when the project was announced. Up north, NewGen takes the other approach — padel as one lane in a four-sport building that already has members walking through the door.

Neither has a public opening date. That is normal for padel construction in a new market, where court structures and glass are typically imported and permitting timelines slip. Both are worth watching, and whichever opens first gives central Ohio its first playable courts.

The rest of the state is further along. Padel Square in Garfield Heights runs six indoor climate-controlled courts in a converted retail space. Cleveland Premier Padel in Avon Lake keeps northern Ohio's other indoor court inside a 50,000-square-foot racquet facility. Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason added two outdoor courts as part of the Cincinnati Open's $260 million renovation. And Cincinnati Padel Club brought four outdoor courts to Cincinnati's Robert James Park complex, which we covered here.

Ohio has gone from effectively no padel to six venues in our directory — a pace that tracks the wider Midwest padel picture. Lewis Center is the next dot on the map.