VIVA Padel Flourtown

This club publishes the paragraph every padel page in Philadelphia needs, and it is worth quoting in full before anything else: "Court fees are based on 4 players per court, even if fewer people are playing. Pricing is per person, per hour — if you're booking for less than 4, you'll still need to cover the full court. You can either pay for the entire group, or add each player to the reservation so they can pay their share. If someone doesn't have an account, you can add them as a guest and pay on their behalf." So a non-member peak hour here is $30 a person and $120 for the court, an off-peak hour is $25 and $100, and you owe four shares whether two of you show up or four.

Peak and off-peak are defined precisely and the boundary is worth five dollars a head an hour: peak is Monday to Friday 4 to 10pm and all day at weekends, off-peak is Monday to Friday 6am to 4pm. There is no cheap weekend window at all.

Five padel courts, all indoor, all doubles — the largest padel court count in the metro. The club lists them itself: "5 Padel Courts • 3 Pickleball Courts • Full Locker Room • Lounge Area • Free Parking". No singles court is named anywhere, on the site, in the program titles or in the court naming. The three pickleball courts share the building, so a resource count would overstate padel by three.

The building is the best local-history hook in the metro. The Magarity Tennis Club stood on this site for forty-nine years; VIVA's ownership group partnered with the building's owners, led by Chris Magarity, and put $750,000 to $1 million into converting roughly thirty thousand square feet of it into five padel and three pickleball courts, opening in late September or early October 2025. A forty-nine-year-old suburban tennis club did not get bulldozed for padel — its owners went into business with it. That makes it the third distinct indoor building type in this metro: Ballers is a 1923 power station, PADELphia a purpose-built 2021 hall, and this is a 1970s tennis barn.

Indoor and year-round, and the club does not claim heating or climate control anywhere. A 1970s indoor tennis building in Montgomery County is heated in practice, and that is an inference rather than the club's claim, so this page says indoor and stops. The cleanest confirmation of the indoor status is a small one: the booking system's cancellation panel here carries no weather clause, and the identical panel at VIVA's Philadelphia site does. One brand, two clubs, and the paperwork tells them apart.

Non-members can book and the rate card's first column is literally headed "Non-Member/Guest". Every program prints a non-member price, and the cancellation policy sets a non-member window — nobody writes a non-member cancellation rule for a club non-members cannot book. Guest passes, one to four a month by tier, are a member perk on top rather than the only door in.

Memberships run five tiers and the initiation fee is a real number: $199 on every tier, currently advertised as waived through 1 January, which is a dated promotion rather than a standing price. Premium Plus at $360 a month makes all court reservations free; Premium at $180 and the Couples and Family bands make off-peak free and charge $17.50 a head at peak; Individual at $90 halves the non-member rates; and Legacy at $75 is the only concession tier published by any venue in this metro — "Affordable Access for Students & Community Heroes". Booking windows scale with the tier from ten to sixteen days.

Cancellation is published verbatim and it splits by status: non-members twenty-four hours, members of every tier twelve. Racket rental is tier-dependent and cheap — demo rackets are free to use for the Premium tiers and $5 basic or $10 premium for Individual and Legacy members. No standalone non-member rental price is published, though the clinic pages say equipment is provided.

The programming runs on WPR, the same system PADELphia uses, and the open plays are explicitly supervised rotations: "A coach or court monitor will help rotate players, offer quick tips, and ensure balanced, engaging games." Advanced Beginner and Intermediate open plays are $40 for a non-member, $25 for a member and free at the Premium tiers. The intro clinic is $55 or $40 for members, with a four-pack at $185. The tournament format is published in full — "Two pools of four teams. The top three teams from each pool advance to the semifinals" — a six-of-eight cut, which is unusual enough to be worth knowing. Nine pros are named, including the three founders, and there is a Pee-wee Padel Academy for under-tens: the only junior academy on any schedule in this metro.

Five courts seat twenty players with nobody resting, and twenty-six is the ceiling before six people are standing around each round. An hour leaves fifty playable minutes, so six rounds at a points target of 21 or eight at 16 — but a full Americano rotation for twenty needs nineteen rounds, which is three hours of padel. At this size book ninety minutes and run a Mexicano, which is what the club's own monitored open plays effectively are.

One wording difference between VIVA's two clubs is worth preserving rather than smoothing over. Flourtown says "Full Locker Room" and never uses the word showers; the Philadelphia site says "2 Showers". A full locker room at a former tennis club almost certainly has them, but the club has not said so, and this page reports it the way the club words it.

You are buying four shares whichever way you play it. The club states it plainly: fees are based on four players per court even if fewer are playing. A pair paying $30 each at peak still owes $120 for the hour.

There is no cheap weekend. Off-peak is weekdays 6am to 4pm and nothing else, so a Saturday morning costs the same $30 a head as a Wednesday evening.

The initiation fee is $199 and the current waiver is dated. If somebody in your group is joining, check whether the promotion is still live rather than assuming a $0 start.

Cancellation splits by status: twenty-four hours for a non-member, twelve for a member of any tier. In a mixed group, plan against the longer one.

Five courts is twenty seats — the largest capacity in the metro. At twenty players an hour is not enough for a full rotation, so book ninety minutes or let the club's monitored open play do the pairing for you.