Every action has a reaction, and every niche rich-person racket-sport club in New York prompts neighborhood backlash. In the past few years, anti-pickleball vigilantes have waged war in Brooklyn Heights, on the Upper East Side, and in the West Village. Now, West Villagers are taking yet another stand, this time against the impending arrival of a new private club at 120 Leroy Street: a would-be spa-slash-restaurant-slash-bar-slash–padel court. (Padel, for those unfamiliar, is a cross between squash and tennis that has become popular in the past few years among the Hudson Yards set.) Though the battle over 120 Leroy has been ongoing for about a year, it all came to a head at a state liquor board meeting this Thursday complete with picket signs and squabbling attorneys.
The list of investors in the project includes Ronnie Fieg, founder of minimalist streetwear brand Kith and short-lived cereal seller. Though this appears to be his first foray into this type of business, he seems to be a tennis enthusiast with at least one Roger Federer collab. Joining him is Michael Cayre, of the Cayre family and Midtown Equities, which runs a veritable private-club empire: The family owns Casa Cipriani, Soho House, and supper club Chez Margaux. Another investor is Numrud Nino Muhatasov, the owner of a chain of massive tennis and fitness clubs in Brooklyn called Matchpoint NYC. It’s not clear how they all met, but Muhatasov posted a photo of the three of them at a Travis Scott concert during last year’s Art Basel. The owners of Cafe Mogador will (theoretically) run the club’s food and beverage operation.
Ronnie Fieg.
Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
In their original application for a liquor license a year ago, the owners described the project as “a private member club with a restaurant, spa facilities, and paddle courts” on the ninth floor and rooftop at 120 Leroy, a nondescript slate-colored commercial building that once housed a WeWork. The restaurant would have a bar with the occasional DJ set and be open to the public for a $50 “cover charge.” Community pushback arrived swiftly, especially against the idea of a noisy rooftop “bar,” not to mention the sound of thwacking padel balls, heavier than the ones used in pickleball, during potential tournaments. According to The Real Deal, residents wrote letters saying “a rooftop venue with padel courts, alcohol, and loud music/live DJ all day until 12 a.m. every night of the week is not at all in line with the character of this area” and would add “noise, drunken rowdiness, and crime.” Community Board 2 voted against the project in May, hoping to encourage the state liquor board to deny the liquor license, though community boards have no actual blocking power.
In the months after, the fight continued. Two local politicians wrote to the state board voicing their opinions against the project. At a January hearing, the board chair ordered the owners to meet with community members, but that reportedly did not go well either. “The Applicants appeared for the February 22, 2025, Meet and Confer wholly unprepared and unwilling to foster a meaningful conversation with respect to the community members’ well-documented and previously expressed concerns,” an attorney representing residents said, per The Real Deal.
All this agita was present in the room on Thursday when the owners appeared yet again in front of the state liquor-license board. They were armed with a “scientific noise study” of other padel clubs. Behind them in the audience were West Villagers holding signs that read “No Rooftop Restaurant” and “No Private Padel.” A pair of parents held their small children at the front. There was tension between the groups — at one point, when a lawyer for the owners tried to say the project was around 50 percent complete, community members started accusing the lawyer of lying to make the project seem closer to being finished than it actually is. “We have eyes,” one person said. The lawyer tried to quell the protest and say noise complaints had no bearing on the liquor-license application. At one point, he also had to emphasize for the board that it was padel, not pickleball or paddleboarding.
The anti-padelers emerged with a small victory from the latest meeting: The owners agreed to scrap the idea of a rooftop bar or restaurant. Now, they have to refile their application for a liquor license for the ninth-floor restaurant. But the community members, if past events are any precedent, will not be vanquished so easily. In 2022, some of their neighbors won just 15 blocks away, successfully banning pickleball from a playground on Hudson. And these residents seem just as organized, with their own Change.org petition and outraged Squarespace website asking supporters to help them stop the club’s proposed “stadium lighting” and “bullet-style noise.”