URBYN / WESTLAKE

Westlake Greenlights Indoor Sports Complex

Eight courts, 206 parking spaces, and a vacant wooded lot on Viking Parkway — how Westlake is quietly rewriting what belongs in an industrial district.

Conditional use permit
Planning Commission approved 5–0, Mar. 2, 2026

A proposed indoor sports complex on Viking Parkway is moving through Westlake's approval pipeline, and on paper it looks less like a niche recreation project and more like a sizable bet on where local demand is headed next. The application, filed as Westlake Indoor Sports, seeks a conditional use permit for a new 51,620-square-foot facility at 31170 Viking Parkway — a 7.2-acre vacant wooded parcel in the city's Exclusive Industrial District. Plans call for eight indoor courts focused primarily on volleyball and basketball, along with 206 parking spaces.

At one level, this is a straightforward land-use story. The use is not permitted by right in the district, so the project needs a conditional use permit under Westlake's zoning code. But the city's own staff report makes clear that this is not unfamiliar territory. Westlake has already approved other large-format indoor recreation concepts in similar settings — Paramount Tennis Club, Sky Zone, and 18Lab Golf. Staff frames this proposal as part of an established pattern: destination recreation uses that need large, open, high-ceiling buildings and end up looking more like warehouse development than conventional retail.

That framing matters, because it says something broader about how suburban industrial land is evolving. In many communities, industrial corridors were once judged mostly by traditional users: warehousing, flex office, light manufacturing, distribution. What Westlake appears increasingly willing to absorb here is a hybrid category — uses that still fit physically within an industrial landscape, but pull in families, leagues, weekend traffic, and a different kind of local energy.

The numbers help explain why the project stands out. A building just over 51,000 square feet is substantial on its own, but the parking plan tells an even clearer story about intended use intensity. Code would require only 32 spaces for eight courts — the concept plan proposes 206. That gap suggests the applicant is designing not merely for daily practices or casual drop-in use, but for surges: tournaments, camps, clustered event schedules, and the sort of peak occupancy that turns a sports facility into a regional traffic generator on select days. Staff estimates normal occupancy at 60 to 80 people, with peaks of around 250 during major events.

Site plan or comparable facility — replace with actual image

Designed to Surge

The building is being designed to convert back to industrial use if the sports operator ever leaves. That's not a footnote — it's a signal about how seriously Westlake is threading this needle.

The operational details reinforce the scale ambition. The facility would run seven days a week, with weekday school-year hours from 3:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. and weekend hours from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Retail would be limited to tournament merchandise and vending. Initial staffing is projected at 5 to 10 employees — lean for a building this size, which further underscores that the economic logic runs through programming density, not a large commercial footprint.

There is also a subtle but important hedge built into the concept. The building and site are being designed to allow future conversion to industrial use if the recreational use is ever discontinued. That detail lowers the long-term planning risk for the city and signals that this isn't being treated as an isolated special case. The proposal is being shaped to fit a broader industrial land strategy even while hosting a nontraditional user — and that flexibility likely strengthens its case precisely because it aligns the near-term recreation use with the district's longer-term development logic.

Why It Matters

When industrial land starts absorbing experience-based recreation uses at this scale, it often reflects deeper confidence in population density, household income, and long-term demand. Westlake's willingness to approve this — and to frame it as consistent with prior approvals — is evidence of how suburban growth is being repackaged: less around pure retail expansion, more around programmed destinations that generate recurring local traffic and can sit comfortably inside older industrial geographies.

Westlake Greenlights Indoor Sports Complex

Designed to Surge

Why It Matters

What's Next