Builders Use Health Spas to Get Tenants : Real Estate: Some developers believe that posh health clubs give office parks an upscale edge. But others wonder how many people can afford $1,500 a year to work out.

When local developers want to put a little more pizazz into their office parks, they often try to get a hotel to locate nearby.

It is also fashionable these days to have a restaurant or two around, preferably one with a chic name that sounds vaguely Italian or Southwestern.

In some buildings you can even get your car washed and detailed or have a concierge take your suit to the cleaners.

Now there a new wrinkle: health clubs. Not the sort of unassuming little places usually found at the end of a strip shopping center. No. We’re talking kayak runs. Cocktail lounges and restaurants. Meditation rooms. Sushi bars. In short, everything a ‘90s kind of person needs to stay fit fashionably.

It’s good for the developer because he gets to tell prospective tenants that their employees will be happier in his building; when they get stressed from making those big deals or from briefing that big case, they can race over to the health club for a workout.

It seems like such a good idea, in fact, that two developers have planned gargantuan health clubs just across the freeway from each other among the glass office towers near John Wayne Airport.

There’s just one problem: Both clubs are so big that they are likely to need several thousand members to make a profit. And with two clubs competing for a limited number of health-conscious yuppies--people who can afford a $675 initiation fee and $75 a month--finding that many new members may not be easy.

To complicate matters still further, one of the clubs has a long head start: Sports Club/Irvine will open soon, its owners say. The second club--the Sporting Club--does not even have a building permit yet, though one is close to being issued. The Sporting Club says it will not open until late next year.

Its competitor contends that that is nothing more than an optimistic guess. “It takes a year and a half to build one of these things because it’s such an unusual type of building,” Michael Talla, co-owner of Sports Club/Irvine, said.

“But that’s OK. They were advertising back in 1987 that they were going to open in June, 1989. We’ll pay attention to them when they finally open.”

If that sounds a little snippy, it is. The two clubs have been taking potshots at each other for two years. But even partisans of the Sporting Club admit that its late start is going to hurt.

“Everybody’s nervous about what the first few years are going to be like,” said Bill Kearns of Birtcher, a Laguna Niguel developer that is leasing the land to the Sporting Club. Birtcher is building two office towers called Lakeshore Towers next door. “The marketing war is going to get ugly,” Kearns said.

Across the San Diego Freeway, at Koll Center Irvine North, the contractors are putting the finishing touches on Sports Club/Irvine. Koll Center Irvine is a cluster of office towers built by the big Newport Beach developer Koll Co.

“One of our biggest marketing factors is the amenities our office projects offer,” a Koll spokesman said. Another big thing is traffic: It helps developers get permission to build if they can tell city planners that all the restaurants, theaters, health clubs and the like in their projects will persuade the workers in their office buildings to tarry a little longer and keep them off the streets during peak traffic hours.

The health club on the Koll property will have a lot to keep office workers diverted. At 100,000 square feet--about the floor space of 40 new houses--the club will have vaulted ceilings, skylights, marble, the usual treadmills, exercise bicycles, two full-sized basketball courts, a pool, a sports medicine clinic, a spa, a salon, private trainers, valet parking, a shoe-shine service and even a press conference room “for business people.”

The other club--also 100,000 square feet--has most of that, plus a kayak run.

Sports Club/Irvine is run by the same people who run Sports Club/LA, a celebrity hangout described by People Magazine as “the fanciest gym in America.” The Sports Club Co., which operates seven other clubs, is owned by Talla and Marvin Davis, the oil and entertainment mogul.

The Sporting Club is a joint venture of San Diego developer Naiman Co. and two Japanese companies. A Naiman subsidiary has developed a string of posh health clubs across the country with Japanese companies as minority investors. The companies in the Irvine club are Nissho Iwai Corp. and Hiroshima Yakult Co.

Both clubs began heavy advertising blitzes two years ago, long before anybody had turned a spadeful of dirt. And they have been signing up prospective members for months. It may be hard, however, for the Sporting Club to hold on to the 1,500 members it claims to have signed once the other club opens. (The Sports Club will not disclose its membership total.)

Both clubs are risky propositions, because if a club fails, it is difficult to turn a building that big and that specialized into something else.

Despite the risks, more such mega-clubs are likely to pop up in Southern California’s urban areas. Not only are they chic, but with vacancy rates for office space more than 20% in some areas, the competition for tenants has become intense. Any edge they can get over other landlords--including a health club--is likely to appeal to office developers.

Both health clubs say they are already talking to other Southern California developers about building clubs near other office projects.

But therein lies a problem. Developers have already built too many office buildings in Southern California, sending vacancy rates through the roof. They have also built too many hotels in most places, and vacancy rates at hotels are high too.

Now, in Irvine, we have what may be the first case of overbuilding these big new health clubs, just as the little strip-mall health clubs have saturated the market. In short, what started out as a solution to the problems of an overbuilt office market may eventually turn into a problem as well.

And some experts are not even sure that tenants really care whether their building is near one of these big new health clubs.

“We’ve done a lot of tenant surveys for developers who were toying with the idea of putting in tennis courts or jogging trails around their offices,” said Bob Dunham, president of Newport Economics Group, a Newport Beach consulting firm. “But what tenants really want are reasonable rents and good property management. The other stuff ranks way down the list.

“I’ve never understood the appeal of those things anyway,” he added. “I pay $8 a month to go to Nautilus.”