Austin Padel Center held its grand opening on August 7, unveiling all nine of its padel courts along with a sauna, cold plunge, full bar and recovery area inside a 22,000-square-foot facility at 1205 Sheldon Cove, Ste. 2-A. The club, which took over the former Wonderspaces building, now anchors a new chapter for the North Austin address that spent more than five years hosting immersive art before shutting its doors.
The site's transformation from gallery to sports club happened in stages, according to Community Impact, which reported that Austin Padel Center opened its first three indoor, climate-controlled courts back in March 2026 as a pop-up before completing the buildout with its remaining six courts this month. The outlet notes the facility now offers memberships, introductory classes and a pro shop alongside the courts themselves. Wonderspaces, the interactive multisensory art gallery that previously filled the space, closed the previous year after operating in Austin since June 2020.
An International Pedigree Behind the Build
The venue was brought to Austin through a partnership between local developer Metis Capital LLC and the van Veggel Family Office, according to Athletic Business. Family office founder Benno van Veggel previously owned Portugal's Lisbon Racket Center, which he sold to soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo in 2024, and also operated the ATP 250 Millennium Estoril Open, bringing years of commercial real estate and racket-club management experience to the North Austin project.
The 22,000-square-foot complex, spread across six indoor and three outdoor courts, was designed by Pflugerville-based FOS Architects to blend hospitality-style social spaces with athletic infrastructure. The firm structured the layout around fluid viewing zones and recovery lounges rather than the boxy warehouse feel common to indoor sports facilities, emphasizing openness alongside regulation play areas.
Part of a Bigger Sheldon Cove Sports Push
Austin Padel Center sits inside Metis Capital's broader Sheldon Cove commercial development, which already anchors Mesa Rim Climbing Gym, a 50,000-square-foot indoor climbing facility with 55-foot walls that opened in March 2023, per Athletic Business. Together the two tenants have turned the parcel into a hub for active recreation, reflecting Metis Capital's pattern of curating experiential and wellness-focused concepts across the site, according to Austin Fit Magazine.
The opening lands squarely in the middle of a national padel boom. Padel crossed 1 million active participants in the United States for the first time in 2025, reaching 1,073,000 players nationwide, according to survey data published by the U.S. Padel Association. The country also passed its 1,000th operational padel court in early 2026 across 37 states, a dramatic jump from fewer than 20 total courts back in 2019, as reported by The Padel Paper, which notes the association projects as many as 20,000 courts nationwide by 2030.
Texas Ranks Second Nationally for Courts
Texas now ranks second in the country for padel court inventory with roughly 120 courts as of mid-2026, trailing only Florida's 268, according to Padel Courts Finder. Globally, padel court facility operations were valued at $3.8 billion in 2025 and are projected to reach $9.6 billion by 2034, supported by 19.4 million players across more than 58,000 courts worldwide, per research published by HTNXT.
Austin's own market is heating up alongside the national numbers. Austin Padel Center's debut coincides with new concepts entering the metro in 2026, including The Padel Collective in North Austin and a second Padel39 venue planned for East Austin, according to Community Impact's separate coverage of the local scene. The clubs are increasingly built around the same formula on display at Sheldon Cove: courts paired with cafes, saunas and cold plunges aimed at fitness-minded residents looking for a social hangout as much as a place to play.
