L.A. Fitness: Destroying Communities One Gym at a Time

ETA: And now . . . the rest of the story.  We won!

Our wonderful community gym—the Rock Creek Sports Club on Grubb Road in Silver Spring—may soon be no more. For the past few years, Rock Creek Sports Club has been owned by Crunch Fitness. But Crunch operated as a shadow owner and never rebranded the gym when it took over from the original owners. Now Crunch has declared bankruptcy and is selling off its assets. L.A. Fitness, another nationwide brand of health clubs, is planning to buy Rock Creek Sports Club…except that court documents show that L.A. Fitness has no plans to keep Rock Creek Sports Club open.

Instead, they will close it and transfer all the memberships to their downtown Silver Spring location…possibly as early as June 24! L.A. Fitness will keep on charging our credit cards, but our gym will be gone. No one has sent us any notice of any of this – all we’ve received are a couple of documents in incomprehensible legalese. What we know we learned at the gym itself and through reading court documents; clear information has been hard to come by.

IP and I have been Rock Creek Sports Club members for four and three years respectively, and this news is devastating, because Rock Creek Sports Club isn’t just our gym: it is part of our community.

It is located in the same strip mall as the Parkway Deli, a dry cleaners, Palais de Lune Chinese restaurant, and the Takoma Park-Silver Spring Food Co-op, to name a few of the businesses. IP and I patronize the dry cleaners frequently, occasionally have some greasy food (or buy beer and soda) at the deli, indulge in some wonton soup when we’re feeling lazy, and buy tortillas, fresh veggies and Amy’s frozen foods at the Co-op. But no one sees us more frequently than the Rock Creek Sports Club. We love this gym.

When IP joined, he’d never belonged to a gym; he was worried that he wouldn’t use the club, but he quickly proved himself wrong as the location and convenience of the gym pulled him towards status as a regular. A year after he joined (a few months after I moved to D.C.), IP gave me the gift that keeps on giving—a membership and constant renewal as a yearly birthday present.

We became gym buddies, encouraging each other to go to the gym even if we’d just rather eat Cheez-Its (and drink beer, at least in IP’s case) in front of Hulu.com. The gym is a two-minute walk from our apartment—we’d be insane to not take advantage of its location, excellent equipment and helpful staff. Many of our neighbors feel the same—it’s an integral part of the Rock Creek Village/Commons/Gardens communities, and we often see neighbors and other regulars there. The low-key and friendly nature of the club sets it apart from the intimidating atmosphere in so many other D.C.-area health clubs. It employs local kids as front desk staff, and we’ve made friends with many of the staff (all of whom will be laid off if the sale goes through). It provides day care to busy parents who want to get a workout in. And it brings paying customers to the deli, Co-op, and Chinese restaurant. Fess up, gym members: which of us hasn’t been guilty of working out and then buying a slice of strawberry shortcake (or six-pack of beer, says IP) from the deli? (IP has heard personal trainers animatedly discussing just this phenomenon.)

That aside, however, the gym works for the community. How the gym is deemed unprofitable and worthy of closing by L.A. Fitness is baffling. The sale to L.A. Fitness is planned for $300,000 (that’s less than the price of a 2-bedroom apartment in Rock Creek Village!). Now, L.A. Fitness isn’t buying the actual facility – it is only buying the memberships. But with 1,879 members (according to court documents), the vast majority of whom pay regular monthly fees, and with a conservative estimate of $40 per month per member, we’re talking about $75,160/month coming into the gym, not including members who make use of child care services, personal trainers, massage therapy, or guest passes. (Plus the gym hosts classes run by outside contractors, including kids karate classes, that drum up additional business.) Over the course of a year, the club makes at least $1 million in fees alone. And the membership that keeps this going is only worth $300,000 (about $160/member)? And L.A. Fitness had the highest bid? And the original owners, who want to buy the club again, can’t match that?

Something here stinks. Not only is the gym going for incredibly cheap, but the fact that they’re closing it down and forcing members to continue memberships downtown reeks of some back scratches that screw over the consumers. It’s my suspicion that L.A. Fitness is shutting the gym down in order to boost their own bottom line—by refusing to let the original owners of the gym take over again, L.A. Fitness gets nearly 2,000 new members, some of whom have no clue this is happening.

But many members will learn, and the folks at L.A. Fitness may be surprised at how many will cancel their memberships should L.A. Fitness close down the Rock Creek Sports Club. IP and I certainly will. A gym in downtown Silver Spring just doesn’t work for us. How and when would we go? Where would we park? Given the fishiness of the sale, the immediacy of the closing (we received notification that L.A. Fitness was buying the gym last Monday, we were told all was well last Tuesday, and walked in on Friday to see a note letting us know that the gym was being closed), and the inconvenience of the downtown L.A. Fitness, we’ll probably be looking for gyms at or near work.

Final hearing (PDF) on the matter is scheduled for June 17 in New York bankruptcy court. The community has organized a petition and a letter writing campaign. But right now the gym is slated to close by the end of the month. If the sale goes through, on the day they padlock our gym, it’s not only our physical condition that will be diminished. It’s also our sense of community.