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\n The club\u2019s interiors were designed by Alfredo Paredes, who also did the Polo Bar and Sailor in Fort Greene.
\n Photo: Alfredo Paredes Studio\n <\/p>\n
A few years ago, SC Hospitality, the arm of a private equity firm, took over a tennis club<\/a> in the Hamptons and added pickleball and padel courts and a restaurant overseen by Billy Durney, the chef behind the upscale burger joint Red Hook Tavern. A number of new families joined, the club began hosting Sunday cookouts, and Daniel Haimovic, SC Hospitality\u2019s chairman, started spending a lot of the summer there with his family, including his two elementary-school-age kids, who played tennis, padel, pickleball, and basketball at the club. It quickly became \u201cmy happy place and my kids\u2019 happy place,\u201d Haimovic said. He thought it was a shame that there weren\u2019t any similar family-friendly clubs in Brooklyn Heights, where he lived with his family the rest of the year, especially given how full of children it is.<\/p>\n But working for SC Hospitality, an arm of sports-and-entertainment-focused private equity firm SC Holdings, he also knew how hard it is to find space for anything approximating a tennis club in New York City. The sport requires large high-ceilinged expanses free of columns or pillars; it\u2019s much easier to install golf simulators, which can go just about anywhere and have eaten up a lot of discounted commercial space left over from the pandemic. Still, there is a dearth of courts<\/a> in New York and a growing demand for spaces dedicated to all racquet sports, especially pickleball. And SC, which recently opened a four-court tennis facility, Hudson River Tennis Club<\/a>, in the old Mercantile Exchange pit on Vesey Street, is always looking for spaces that might work for indoor tennis. Haimovic then ran into a friend, Justin Weiner, a principal at East Gate Investors, a real-estate investment firm, who told him he knew just the place: the old Hotel St. George on Henry Street, which, since 2023, has had a vacant athletic club (the former Eastern Athletic Club) spread across four floors. A couple of years ago, a nonprofit squash club was planning to take over<\/a> the space, but the deal fell through. The hotel itself converted to a co-op in the 1980s with a portion of the rooms reserved for student apartments and a ground-floor level that includes a physical-therapy office, a flower shop, and the entrance to the Clark Street 2\/3 train.<\/p>\n \n One of the indoor tennis courts. There will also be squash and pickleball courts. For SC and East Gate, which is partnering on the project, the space was ideal: Eastern Athletic had had a swimming pool and squash courts, and the hotel is in the heart of Brooklyn Heights and easy to get to from downtown Manhattan. So they signed a 49-year lease for the entire 52,000-square-foot Eastern Athletic Club space and next May plan to open Kings Athletic Club<\/a>, a racquet and wellness club in the historic building that, amid a boom in urban country clubs<\/a>, will be perhaps the most country club of them all. There will be a pool, two tennis courts, a squash court, pickleball, and golf simulators along with wellness amenities more traditional to the city, such as yoga and Pilates studios, a cold plunge, a hot tub, saunas, a climbing wall, and a basketball half-court. There\u2019s a bar and restaurant, too, also overseen by Durney, which will serve American classics similar to what you\u2019ll find at Red Hook Tavern, whose menu features dry-aged-beef burgers, fish and chips, wedge salad, and pork chops (and lighter breakfasts and lunches). Sundays will offer family dinners with dishes for the table to share, such as roast chicken or fish with sides. There will also be movie nights and pickleball mixers with wine and cheese.<\/p>\n \n The Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights was once a swanky hot spot. It converted to a co-op in the early 1980s with some student apartments, retail, and a 52,000-square-foot athletic club. People are already signing up for the tennis memberships, which are capped at 200 families (75 have been taken, according to SC, with members so far coming from their other clubs and word of mouth). Non-tennis-club members, which are not capped for now, will have access to all the facilities except the tennis courts. SC and East Gate declined to share details on the cost of membership. Each application also has to go through a membership committee. The club will be open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and to members of all ages at all times (though the expectation is that kids will not be closing the club out every night).<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the only family club coming to the area: The wealthy waterfront neighborhoods around Brooklyn Heights are becoming an epicenter of family-friendly clubs with Life Time in Dumbo, an upscale gym that offers child care and children\u2019s programming, and Space Club, the child-centric, well-designed play space from Fort Greene that\u2019s opening a second location in Dumbo. Beginning, another club in Brooklyn Heights slated to open next summer, also bills itself as a members\u2019 club for families. Child care there is built into the membership fees so you can drop off your toddler, hit a Pilates class, and then enjoy a glass of wine in an adults-only restaurant before, say, reuniting with your family for dinner on the rooftop. But Kings Athletic Club is designed to operate closer to a traditional country-club model: It\u2019s more of a bring-your-own-babysitter situation with child care available at certain times, such as Saturdays and Sundays during brunch. You might drop off your 8-year-old for a tennis lesson \u2014 fitness instructors will be available for all sports and ages \u2014 while you play a game with friends or swim laps in the pool.<\/p>\n Early renderings of the spaces show an old-fashioned, preppy aesthetic with hardwood floors, coffered ceilings, Persian carpets, framed racquets, and an abundance of green accents. Zero Bond this is not. The designer, Alfredo Paredes, also did the Polo Bar and Sailor in Fort Greene. The look gives a nod to the history of the hotel, a swank hot spot of the early 20th century frequented by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller. In the early 1920s, the hotel basement held a 120-foot saltwater pool fed by the East River. (The current pool, in a different spot on the lowest level, will not be sourced from any rivers.) By next year, with the opening of Kings, the place seems poised to enter a more upscale era \u2014 a departure from that of the Eastern Athletic Club, which was known for being frowsy and a little strange \u2014 albeit not quite a return to its most glamorous heyday. The idea, Haimovic says, is to create a \u201csuper-family-friendly atmosphere \u2014 everyone who has joined recently has been a family with one to five kids. If kids running around will annoy you, this is not the club for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/8346995c73a15e39091bfa459fb457d9e2-LowerCourt-250716.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Alfredo Paredes Studio\n <\/p>\n![\"Hotel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/224de74f5bc5ede37654ab9e3eb4d18cb1-GettyImages-540359216.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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\n Photo: George Rinhart\/Corbis\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n