Indoor pickleball courts, rage room opening in Westbury mall

Places for play and paying to destroy things  will be opening in a Westbury mall.

Pickleball Smash-It, an indoor pickleball venue, opened Friday and Smash-It Therapy, which is a rage room, will open in a few weeks at Samanea New York, said Matthew Kucker, managing director in real estate company Colliers International's Jericho office who represents the mall in leasing.

The rage room and pickleball courts’ presence at Samanea New York, which was formerly called the Mall at the Source, align with the landlord’s efforts to change the fortunes of the formerly mostly vacant property with a $30 million renovation and a focus on bringing in restaurant, entertainment and home furnishings tenants, which are less susceptible to online competitors than apparel and shoe stores.

“Smash therapy rooms and of course, pickleball, are both sought-after recreational pastimes. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome the Smash-It brand to the property,” Dominic Coluccio, director of real estate for the mall, said in a statement Thursday. 

Pickleball, a game in which players use paddles to hit a plastic ball over a net, is the fastest-growing sport in the United States, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.

Pickleball Smash-It will have two spaces, each of which will have a court, and occupy a total of 11,183 square feet, according to Samanea.

“Pickleball has become a national sensation over the past few years,” Christopher Michael, who owns both Smash-It Therapy and Pickleball Smash-It, said in the statement. “We saw a unique opportunity to bring pickleball to Nassau County in a way that allows people to reserve a single, private court for a more intimate and enjoyable social experience."

He could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Rage rooms allow customers to vent their anger or relieve stress by destroying items. 

Smash-It Therapy will occupy a 6,115-square-foot unit in the mall, where the venue will have four themed smash areas and one paint splatter area, according to Samanea.

“While customers will get to choose from a variety of objects to smash, including glassware, electronics, musical instruments and more, some of our areas will also be designed with gentler objects to accommodate every type of customer,” Michael said in the statement.

Located at 1500 Old Country Road, Samanea is 750,000-square-foot mall that was plagued by a high vacancy rate for years.

Originally built in 1996 for $200 million, the mall began to decline when one of its main anchors, a 250,000-square-foot, free-standing Fortunoff department store, closed in 2009 after the retailer’s bankruptcy.

Lesso Mall Development Long Island Inc., a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Lesso Group Holdings Ltd., bought the property for $92 million in 2017, changed its name, and then completed a $30 million renovation of the property in March 2021.

By May 2021, there were only six tenants in the mall: Dave & Buster’s, the Cheesecake Factory, Fortunoff Backyard Store, Leon Banilivi Rugs, Bloomingdale’s Furniture Outlet and Kawai Piano Outlet.

Now, there are 19 current tenants, including X-Golf, a combination indoor golf simulator, restaurant and bar venue that opened at the mall in March; membership-based crafting center Let’s Craft, which opened in July; and Asian grocer 99 Ranch Market, which opened in April 2022 in 45,602 square feet of space that was vacated by Circuit City in 2009. 

Among the incoming tenants are Empire Adventure Park, a family entertainment center, and The Gravity Vault, an indoor rock-climbing gym franchise, both of which are expected to open in 2024, Kucker said.

Currently, 78% of the mall is leased and 62% is occupied by operating tenants, according to Samanea.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.com@ToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.