Canadian commercial real estate developers are jumping on the pickleball bandwagon.

More and more pickleball courts are coming to commercial properties across the country. Fairgrounds Public Racket is working with developers across the country to install courts on their properties, the Globe and Mail reported.

Pickleball is a fast-growing leisure sport that incorporates elements akin to tennis, badminton and ping pong. The game is played on a small tennis-like court and players use odd-shaped paddles, rather than the oval ones deployed in ping pong, and a whiffle ball.

Fairgrounds has installed nine new pickleball courts at Toronto’s Cloverdale Mall within a former Target store location, the Globe and Mail.

QuadReal Property Group is redeveloping the 32-acre mall site and has decided to include pickleball courts among the mixed-use features. The Vancouver-based developer has also engaged Toronto-based Fairgrounds to install courts at its Assembly Park mixed-use development in Vaughan, Ont.

Aaron Knight, senior vice-president of development at QuadReal, told the Globe that pickleball facilities make sense for Cloverdale as it gets redeveloped. Fairgrounds is also opening courts in downtown Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary, the Globe reported. The company’s website says a court is also coming soon to Vancouver.

“The developers we’re working with are trying to leverage their space to bring more traffic,” Fairgrounds Co-founder Drummond Munro told the Globe. “Pickleball has entered the social zeitgeist; you can attribute its growth to people’s desire to get out and be together after the pandemic.”

Bobby MacDonald, Southwestern Ontario brokerage managing partner for Colliers Canada, told the Globe that the pickleball trend is bigger in U.S. commercial buildings.

Benjamin Shinewald, BOMA Canada’s president and CEO, told the Globe that pickleball courts are part of an “amentization” movement whereby tenants increasingly seek amenities in buildings where they live work and play.

“All these things are designed to improve the tenant experience,” he told the Globe.

“Why not pickleball?”