Life Fitness to Move Irvine Team to Illinois

Life Fitness is moving its 70-person sales and marketing department from Irvine to its headquarters outside Chicago.

A company spokesman confirmed Thursday that the Irvine office will be scaled down to a district branch of about eight people.

“We’re moving into the consumer market aggressively, and we felt the marketing folks and the engineers should be able to sit next to each other during that process,” said Michael Blyth, executive vice president of marketing.

The company, which makes the original programmable stationary bicycle, the Lifecycle, had moved its manufacturing plant from Irvine to Franklin Park, Ill., when it was owned by Bally Manufacturing Corp.

In July, 1991, a management team purchased the company back from Bally for $62.5 million and renamed it Life Fitness.

Blyth said the Irvine employees were all offered jobs in Franklin Park. He said the company will consolidate the 60-plus jobs in its main facility and hire additional people.