Exercise in Athletic Opulence : Big-Scale, Upscale Sports Club Courts the Well-Heeled

Above a sweeping staircase, the wedge-shaped face of the Sports Club/Irvine juts upward like the prow of an ocean liner.

The analogy is not an idle one.

The spanking-new fitness super-club in the Koll Center Irvine resembles a cruise ship, a place where you can leave the ordinary world behind.

At 130,000 square feet, the Sports Club/Irvine is a spacious, amenity-laden juggernaut built with the county’s well-heeled fitness fanatics firmly in mind.

“It’s the largest athletic club in California,” club president and co-owner Michael Talla says. “It’s going to be the nicest club in the world. The biggest focus of the club is on personal training of the members. We’re going to take people from A to Z in what they want to know about fitness.”

Hyperbole aside, Talla and his partner, Nanette Pattee Francini, have a lot of experience in putting up large, upscale fitness centers. They conceived and developed the 100,000-square-foot Sports Club/LA, which opened to great fanfare in Santa Monica in 1987.

In the past 12 years they have also opened six of the 45,000-square-foot Sports Connection clubs.

When it opens to members in mid-February, the Sports Club/Irvine will be the first to deliver a finished product in the two-year marketing war with its archrival, the Sporting Club of Irvine.

Offering everything from valet parking to executive locker rooms, the Sports Club’s overriding theme is opulence.

In designing the Irvine complex, Talla and company drew heavily on their experience with the Sports Club/LA. “The biggest thing we learned from the Sports Club/LA was to make it bigger, to make the member convenience areas bigger,” Talla says.

The lesson was well remembered.

The building’s core is an atrium that opens to a half-arch roof of tinted glass four stories overhead. “The whole concept was to bring the outdoors indoors,” says Philip Swain, the Sports Club’s district manager, as he leads the way into the Sports Bar and Grill at the base of the atrium.

The Sidewalk Cafe and the Sports Bar will be the informal social center of the club.

“It’s supposed to be a fun, upbeat, neighborhood-bar kind of feel,” says Pattee Francini, the club’s executive vice president. Behind the grill and bar, the dining room offers a quieter atmosphere.

Outside the dining room, there’s a 25-meter swimming pool, backed by a three-tiered sun deck with a cascading waterfall.

The heart of the club is the 14,000-square-foot co-ed gym that flows across the third and fourth levels.

Two 3,000-square-foot aerobics rooms feature spring-loaded floors with a pronounced bounce. There’s a 3,000-square-foot free-weight area and a 5,000-square-foot deck for cardiovascular workouts.

From the stationary bicycles on the cardiovascular deck, members will enjoy the best views in the club, whether they are people-watching, gazing at the mountains or monitoring the news on the three wall-mounted 50-inch TVs.

On the cardiovascular deck, three stations of five bikes each are hooked up to a computer program and TV monitor, allowing a cyclist to compete against four other “racers”--a competitive challenge that has proved to be extremely popular at the Sports Club/LA.

The Irvine facility also has a gym large enough to accommodate six half-court or two full-court basketball games, or both basketball and volleyball. Games can be videotaped for later replay on the monitors in the bar.

The women’s areas are on a par with the men’s and in many ways they have been designed for greater privacy. The club has a 2,600-square-foot women’s gym, with private access from the women’s locker rooms.

On the roof of the building are squash and paddle-tennis courts, plus an 11-laps-to-the-mile jogging track.

All the physical activity will be overseen by roughly 100 trainers. In addition, registered physical trainers in the club’s Sports Training Institute will be available for one-on-one physical therapy. The institute will be run by Michael O’Shea, who is well known on the East Coast for his work with National Hockey League teams.

The force that drives the emergence of a $25-million health club is the availability of clients willing to pay a hefty price for top-of-the-line service.

Does Orange County have enough such clients to support the club? “We’re pushing toward 4,000 members,” Talla says. “We think the club will be full within 90 days of opening.”

“Full” will mean 6,000 to 7,000 members. The limit to total membership will depend on the ratio of membership to usage, Talla says. The Sports Club/Irvine is designed for up to 1,700 members to use the club each day.

Talla says his company’s past experience has shown that the ratio of membership to usage varies up to 30% from club to club.

The outlay for members includes a $675 initiation fee and $75 a month for the basic health club membership. With racquet sports, it’s $775 and $90 a month. The executive membership goes for $1,350 and $130 a month and provides a personal locker, laundry services for workout gear and includes racquet sports and charging privileges, as well as a preferred price on valet parking.

“We will sell all the executive memberships,” Talla says. “They probably sell three times faster than the regular memberships.”

One perk of the executive membership is the corporate membership. When a company takes a corporate membership, the Sports Club will heavily discount the employees’ initiation fees, although monthly dues will remain fixed.

For example, under the terms of its agreement with the Sports Club, Irvine Co. employees will receive a 60% discount on the initiation fee, an Irvine Co. representative says. So far, three people have signed up.

The Sports Club claims such corporate clients as the Koll Co., Columbia Savings, Sedgwick James of Calif. Inc., and the law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. “All of these have 100-plus members, and some have a couple of hundred memberships,” Talla says. A club newsletter lists area companies that “have chosen the Sports Club/Irvine for their staff sports and fitness needs.”

Members can have their laundry done and their clothes dry-cleaned on site. The Oasis Body Salon will offer massages, facials, body wraps, waxing, tanning and such exotica as aroma therapy. The spa areas have spas, saunas and steam baths.

Beyond its fitness aspect, the Sports Club/Irvine has a 1,600-square-foot conference/meeting room equipped for business meetings or for such social functions as weddings and parties.

At the 1,300-square-foot child-care center, members pay $2.50 an hour for the first child and $1 an hour for each of the others.

Assuming all these resources can be pulled together into a cohesive whole, the Sports Club/Irvine will add a new level of glamour to the county fitness landscape.