Recovery, real estate pumping up L.A.'s rapid health club growth.Health club operators, viewing Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. as a wide-open market with no dominant player and avid exercise ethos, have been pouring millions of dollars into new clubs in a trend that is expected to continue through the year. A number of other factors are contributing to the boom, including a ready stock of available real estate and a belief that the economic recovery is strong enough for people to feel comfortable about paying monthly health club dues. "There's 100,000 square feet in new fitness clubs from Santa Monica Santa Monica (săn`tə mŏn`ĭkə), city (1990 pop. 86,905), Los Angeles co., S Calif., on Santa Monica Bay; inc. 1886. Tourism and retailing are important, and the city has motion-picture, biotechnology, and software industries. to Beverly Hills--that's a lot," said Matthew May, president of May Realty Advisors. "I don't remember that much going on in ages." At least seven clubs, ranging from 25,000 square feet to more than 35.000 square feet, have or are slated to open on the Westside and adjacent areas alone between July 2003 and October, 2004, offering upwards of 30,000 new memberships. "Our greatest opportunity lies within the L.A. marketplace," said John Klein, head of real estate at New York-based Equinox equinox (ē`kwĭnŏks), either of two points on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect. The vernal equinox, also known as "the first point of Aries," is the point at which the sun appears to cross the Fitness Clubs, which has 16 of its 19 units in and-around New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . "You have the exercise mentality, and no one has dominated the market." The company has two area clubs and last month signed a lease for 32,000 square feet in the office building at 201 Santa Monica Blvd. in downtown Santa Monica. It plans to complete the three-plus-story build-out there in the third quarter. For Equinox, which opened a club at West Hollywood's Sunset Millennium project A parallel computing project at the University of California at Berkeley. Using nearly a thousand computers donated by Intel, its focus is on developing a multi-level "system of systems" that uses local clusters of SMP machines called a "CLUMP. in July, the Santa Monica lease is the latest salvo in its high-end fitness center war with Sports Club/LA. Last year, Sports Club/LA beat out Equinox for a 40,000-square-foot Beverly Hills Beverly Hills, city (1990 pop. 31,971), Los Angeles co., S Calif., completely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles; inc. 1914. The largely residential city is home to many motion-picture and television personalities. site and opened its second local facility at 9601 Wilshire Blvd. in October. Equinox opened its first L.A. County club in Pasadena in 2000, and will spend more than $6.5 million on its Santa Monica location. Klein said Sports Club/LA's decision to take the Beverly Hills space, its second county location after its Sepulveda Boulevard flagship, was a defensive move prompted by Equinox's entrance into the market. Sports Club/LA officials did not return calls seeking comment. Push at all levels The battle is not just confined to the high-end market, where dues are often over $100 a month and an initiation fee can run into the hundreds of dollars. This week, Bodies In Motion Inc., where dues start at $59 a month, opened a $6 million, 35,000-square-foot club in the Westside Media Center on Olympic Boulevard Olympic Boulevard may mean:
That facility, scheduled for an October opening, will be at least 25,000 square feet and could expand to 55,000 square feet, said Bruce Gordon Bruce Gordon may refer to:
Further south, 24 Hour Fitness is building out a 37,000-square-foot club at the Wateridge office complex near Culver City Culver City, city (1990 pop. 38,793), Los Angeles co., S Calif., a residential suburb of Los Angeles; inc. 1917. It is a center of the U.S. motion-picture industry, whose roots in the city date to c.1915. Its chief manufactures are rubber products and computers. that should open this summer, and in May it will shift its 15,000-square-foot club at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport to a 22,000-square-foot facility at 5959 Century Blvd. Club owners say they are confident there are bodies to fill the clubs. Data for Los Angeles fitness club openings and membership are not kept, but nationally, the Boston-based International Health Racquet & Sportsclub Association projects that 9 million people will join health clubs this year, 1 million this month alone. There were 36 million gym memberships in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. in 2003, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the group, though the projections for this year do not take attrition into account. Gordon said the expansion of the regional and national chains comes at the expense of the independent operators that still control a substantial number of memberships. "There are a lot of wealthy people in the Los Angeles area," he said. "This is one of the few industries that is still extremely fragmented." Landlord's flexing The push has proven a boon to landlords looking to fill space emptied out by shrinking firms and retailers or yet to be filled in projects built out during the dot-com bust Refers to the years 2000 to 2002, when the bottom fell out of the dot-com industry and hundreds of dot-com companies went bankrupt. All the rest lost a huge amount, if not almost all, of their stock valuation. See dot-com bubble. . Real estate investment firm Douglas Emmett has been one of those actively courting the clubs - it owns both 201 Santa Monica Blvd. and 9601 Wilshire Blvd. Neither Klein nor May, one of the brokers on the Equinox lease, would disclose financial terms of the deal for former office space in Santa Monica. At the market's going monthly rate of $3-plus for office space, the 25-year deal could be worth about $27 million. At the Westside Media Center, developer Kilroy Realty Corp. has turned to Bodies In Motion to help erase the project's image as a symbol of the dot-com bust. Defunct e-taller eToys defaulted on its lease for 151,000 square feet there in 2001, and the club's occupancy has helped raise the once mostly empty 382,000-square-foot complex's occupancy rate Noun 1. occupancy rate - the percentage of all rental units (as in hotels) are occupied or rented at a given time pct, per centum, percent, percentage - a proportion in relation to a whole (which is usually the amount per hundred) to above 70 percent. Bodies In Motion could also take as much as 45 percent of CIM (1) (Computer-Integrated Manufacturing) Integrating office/accounting functions with automated factory systems. Point of sale, billing, machine tool scheduling and supply ordering are part of CIM. Group's Hollywood Galaxy retail center, which has been plagued by low occupancy since its construction more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, fitness chain operators show no signs of blinking after the expansion push. Equinox's goal is to have 10 clubs in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, by the end of 2006, said Klein, while Bodies In Motion, which will air its first TV spots this month, will attempt to open between four and six clubs a year after 2004, said Gordon. RELATED ARTICLE: Shaping up? Sean Hackney General Manager Boulevard Health Club, Los Angeles "Everyone's got different fitness goals. Triathletes are taking the winter off, while marathon runners are getting ready for the L.A. Marathon in March, so they're here. But then you have a lot of people doing cosmetic athletics--using body make-over systems--so their workouts are probably a lot stronger early in the year. "But there's also a strong regional impact. I'm looking at a guy right now who has been in the gym every day for the last 150 days. These are people who work out constantly. It's not like it would be in North Dakota North Dakota, state in the N central United States. It is bordered by Minnesota, across the Red River of the North (E), South Dakota (S), Montana (W), and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba (N). ." Walter Rodas Assistant General Manager Meridian Sports Club A sports club, athletics club or sports association is an eclectic institution oriented to multiple sports, which fields many teams and has varied sports departments in several sports, working under the same umbrella organization. , Century City "The first half of January is pretty slow, but during the second half of the month, they start rolling in. They come in flocks--family members, mutual friends--because they need somebody to motivate them. The second quarter is also pretty good because of the summer factor. "They'll usually start by focusing on the cardiovascular and endurance sector. If they make it to the summer, they will have seen changes--not necessarily physically, but in terms of energy level--so they can do workouts that weren't feasible earlier in the year. So they'll do more strength training like free weights. "When it gets to late summer and fall, attendance tends to drop because people are outdoors. A lot of Century City clients are on vacation and if they're not, they'll play basketball outdoors as opposed to being in the club."--Danny King |
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