Gyms go for glam
Imagine: You step into a health club and instead of the usual “boom, boom, boom” of the generic house music you’re greeted with the soothing strains of jazz legend Stan Getz. In place of the frenzied front desk area there’s a calming bamboo garden and waterfall. After your workout, you relax in a beautifully appointed lounge or dine on gourmet food prepared by one of the city’s top chefs.
It can be yours -- if you’re willing to pay $100 a month for a health-club membership. Two new uber-gyms are due to open this year, both branches of upscale chains: New York-based Equinox debuts its 30,000-square-foot facility in West Hollywood’s Sunset Plaza in the summer (it has another club in Pasadena), and the Sports Club/LA opens a 40,000-square-foot club in the heart of Beverly Hills in the fall.
Not that the Westside has a dearth of gyms, or even upscale gyms. But these clubs are banking on the idea that people want more and better and nicer. Their target audience: the nearly one in five Americans earning $75,000 a year or more who have health club memberships. (That figure rises to one in four among people who earn more than $75,000 a year and hold graduate school degrees.)
To lure this desirable demographic takes more than state-of-the-art fitness equipment and a smorgasbord of trendy exercise classes. It must make them feel important and pampered -- and that means an environment that looks like a page torn from House & Garden. “For this group of people, design matters, from a functional standpoint and an atmosphere standpoint,” says Bill Howland, director of research for the Boston-based International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Assn.. “They are aficionados of quality.”
That’s why some club owners are cultivating an ambience reminiscent of a hip boutique hotel or “understated chic,” as Paul Boardman, Equinox’s executive vice president of development, calls it. This is not gym as disco.
Equinox plans a mid-century modern interior in a palette of “celery greens and California yellows offset with deep, dark browns and some wonderful cranberries,” Boardman says. The coed lounge will feature low lighting and custom-designed sofas, chairs and chaise longues.
Locker rooms will feature stone finishes, glass tile mosaics and custom sinks and mirrors. “The whole approach,” Boardman says, “is to make that experience as flattering as possible,” down to finding the right light bulb wattage for the grooming stations. The club also will include a spa and gourmet health food restaurant run by a high-profile local restaurateur.
Then there are the fitness facilities: dedicated studios for group exercise, yoga, Spinning and Pilates; separate cardio and weight rooms and another area for stretching. Classes will be sports-related (training for a triathlon); fusion-oriented (mixing Pilates and yoga); and those that incorporate dynamic meditation, in which participants will focus on “the mindfulness of the exercise,” according to Equinox’s director of group fitness, Carol Scott. Membership requires a $295 initiation fee and $110 a month.
A couple of miles west, smack in the middle of the Beverly Hills shopping district, is the future home of the Sports Club/Beverly Hills.
Not far from the company’s sprawling mega-club on Sepulveda Boulevard, this one is more petite, less than half the size. But there’s no stinting on the amenities, beginning with the “sleek, Zen-inspired design” rendered in cream and fawn skin hues, according to Sports Club founder Nanette Pattee Francini. A bamboo garden and waterfall in the entryway will encourage clients to “drop their cares at the door.”
A studio just for yoga and mind-body classes will boast a bamboo floor, a trompe l’oeil mirror, Shoji screens and simulated candlelight. “There will be energy in those spaces that require energy,” says Francini.
The club also will offer 40 group exercise classes and a cardio room outfitted with 100 pieces of equipment, each with a TV screen. In addition to a full-service spa, the club will have a restaurant, an offshoot of the fashionable L.A. eatery Linq.
The club also is notable for what it won’t have: machines with Internet access or scrolling text message boards. Francini sees no use for them here: “This is a place to escape all that.” Membership rates for the Beverly Hills branch have not been determined, but the average membership at the Sports Club/LA includes a $1,200 initiation fee and $148 a month.
“We’re dealing,” says Francini, “with the very fortunate. And they recognize the best right away. They expect it.”
Francini and interior designer Kent Walker traveled around the country to check out the decor in top hotels, restaurants, spas and other Sports Club locations.
With the clientele she’ll be courting, “design should make a difference,” Francini says. “Design is what makes you want to come back.”
These new L.A. clubs aren’t the only ones trying to enhance their environments. Howland, of the International Health group, says some clubs are putting more money into the decor of new buildings. “I’ve heard operators talking about switching the lighting in the locker rooms so it looks nicer on bare skin. People probably don’t consciously recognize that, but it helps them feel comfortable.”
Not everyone is racing to hire interior designers and buy pricey Italian cappuccino machines. Derek Barton, senior vice president of marketing for Gold’s Gym, says the new Equinox and Sports Club gyms are “building to that niche that likes high design, and that’s the clientele. If that’s what they’re going for, great. I think atmosphere is important, but our gyms have their own atmosphere. There’s room for everybody.”
*
Jeannine Stein can be reached by e-mail at jeannine.stein @latimes.com.