Sluggersville Philadelphia, an indoor baseball and softball training facility, will have a grand opening party from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Saturday at 9490 Blue Grass Road.
The facility contains 11 “tunnels,” or netted training areas, within an indoor space, a spacious parents’ lounge and it’s open all year.
Sluggersville has been open since Sept. 29, and already has 300 clients signed up, said Joe Brown, who owns the business along with Jim Mort, Joe Doyle and Nick Capecci, whom he described as all sports-loving Northeast guys.
“I have coaches who are booking all the way to the spring,” Brown said. A newly hired trainer started this week and already has 48 sessions scheduled, he said.
Brown ran into some roadblocks setting up Sluggersville.
In 2011, he had gotten the Parkwood Civic Association’s OK and Zoning Board of Adjustment approval to open his venture at 12285 McNulty Road.
However, that property had industrial zoning, and, in September 2011, Brown told Parkwood members he had been threatened with a lawsuit by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation if he opened because the property’s deed restricted it to industrial use.
That prompted Brown to keep looking until he found the Blue Grass Road property. That, too, was zoned industrial, he said in an interview Oct. 11, but a variance to allow the sports operation was granted in the winter.
Sluggersville Philadelphia’s hours are Monday through Friday, 2 to 9 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. For information, call 215–673–1258 or visit www.sluggersville.com ••
