Town & Country to Call on Beck

The bible of America’s social set is headed for Orange County, and this time not to chronicle the cognoscenti.

Come summer, Town & Country--the magazine that four years ago named the Who’s Who of Orange County society--will zero in on fitness empress Toni Beck, executive director of the new Spa at the Center, the $7-million pampering complex that has C.J. Segerstrom & Sons (owners of South Coast Plaza) as a chief investor.

Beck, who has soothed the psyches of Sting, Cheryl Tiegs, Gregory Hines, Linda Gray and others too famous to mention, originated the Spa at the Crescent in Dallas--named in the March issue of Longevity magazine as one of America’s best hotel spas--and the Greenhouse in Arlington, Tex., (which Longevity pronounced Best at Pampering).

Checking into Costa Mesa last week to meet with good friend Jeffrey Jones, president of Leisure Development Interests--a co-investor of the project--Beck was all pink-cheeked optimism as she rhapsodized about Orange County’s answer to Terme di Montecatani, the spa tucked away in Italy’s Tuscan hills.

“People are always taking vacations to go to spas,” Beck chirps over a calorie-conscious plate of grilled prawns at the Center Club. “And by September, Orange County will have its own--probably the only free-standing spa in the world.”

Most spas are connected to hotels, she explains, because they depend on hotel clientele to keep them operative.

But with its location near the Orange County Performing Arts Center (in what was once the rambling Ambrosia restaurant) and a high-density business district, the Spa at the Center can stand alone.

“The area is absolutely perfect for an urban spa,” says Beck, who sports a cherry-colored blazer and little makeup. “A place for health and fitness will be the crown of the complex. You have theaters, hotels, businesses, the best shopping in the world, but you don’t have fitness.”

Invitations to join the private, 17,000-square-foot facility go out next month. Members of the Center Club get first crack at anteing up the $2,500 initiation fee. Dues will be $145 per month for individuals, $245 for couples. After the Center Club, friends of the spa’s investors and board of governors will be invited to join. If that doesn’t fill the roster, invitations will go out to the business district.

I hear you: Does Orange County really need another health club?

Bite your tongue. The Spa at the Center won’t be just another health club, Jones promises.

It will be an urban oasis, with gushing fountains and cascading waterfalls designed by Aspen’s Travis Fulton, a descendant of Robert Fulton of steamboat fame. It will have a circular driveway, port cochere , and valet parking. It will offer stress reduction sessions, workouts, steams, massages and facials. It will offer spa cuisine, wine, beer and mineral waters from around the world. Breakfast and dinner with a view of the Performing Arts Center will also be on tap. And, it will be the kind of place, Jones says, “where you can drop off your tux to be cleaned at 4 and pick it up by 6.”

In other words, it will be a co-ed sanctum-sanctorum for 1,200 members of Orange County’s smart set, Jones says, “people who live in beautiful homes, stay at beautiful hotels, eat at fabulous restaurants and don’t want to work out at a family fitness center.”

Until now, the top end of the spa market has not been completely addressed, he notes. “The mature market--people who don’t want to work out with hundreds of others in a competitive, judgmental environment.”

Beck says: “The value of the small, private, elitist club is that you get to work with trainers who can really know your needs. It will be a gracious, elegant, home-away-from-home.

“Most health clubs put you on a computer and then you’re on your own. At our spa, someone will always be there. You’re re-evaluated constantly.”

Jones sees the Spa at the Center as a meeting place where corporate top guns are more approachable “because their guard is down a bit,” he says.

“It’s going to be much easier to communicate in a situation where you don’t have to approach a table to carry on a conversation.”