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

By: WordNerd

WordNerd — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:26:48 +0000

Hey, Appreciative, guess what? We won. We protested, the original owners won the bid and we kept our gym. Crunch mismanaged Rock Creek Sports Club, not the original owners; we made a choice to NOT go to L.A. Fitness in the first place and supported the original owners in buying back the gym, so we DID do something and we succeeded. So read the rest of the story before commenting.

By: Appreciative

Appreciative — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:06:31 +0000

I feel very diffrent then all of you. If it where not for your own personal selfish reasons you would not be here. This is a company that did not manage themselves well in the first place wich is why they are going BANKRUPT! How is this a posative thing for a community or shopping center? I would say that if you like a club there close to your home….get everybody that is attending your pitty party to invest in putting a new club in there after it’s gone. Remember that one thing is constent….change!

By: Sonnet 87 » Local Gym’s Struggles Noticed by Wall Street Journal Blogger

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:28:39 +0000

[...] site has seen a lot of activity in the past few days thanks to the post that IP and I wrote a few days ago. Even people from Crunch and L.A. Fitness were hitting the site. I’d [...]

By: Moira

Moira — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:27:05 +0000

Thank You, IP for expressing so eloquently what I feel about our gym.

For the first time in 13 years of living in Rock Creek Gardens, I have imagined moving out of the neighborhood. I continue to live here and love it in part because of our club. It is a part of my life and my community.

Moira

By: IP

IP — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:41:09 +0000

Lawrence – Do you know how we can get our hands on contact information for the whole membership? Not surprisingly, I couldn’t find it in the court docket.

I’ve signed the petition and sent the letter of objection to the judge (and other parties). I was considering sending a second, more personalized letter that expands on some of the points the way you did. For example, nowhere in my contract does it say my membership is transferrable in the event of the gym’s permanent closure.

Beyond that, and helping Wordnerd with this post to try to drum up some publicity, I am really at a loss for what else we can do. Neither L.A. Fitness nor Crunch have been communicative with the membership at all. If the original owners are planning to make some kind of appeal at the June 17th hearing, or truly make a counteroffer, I have no idea what it is.

The court filings seem to indicate that Crunch is claiming no such prepayments exist, so if they do, that’s something to make an issue of.

Any other specific ideas would be more than welcome.

By: WordNerd

WordNerd — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:59:50 +0000

Hi Lawrence:

The goal of the blog post was to get awareness out; we’d been hoping we’d get recognized by DCBlogs or the Express, but not yet. We also contacted another blogger who covers Silver Spring specifically. Before last night, no one beyond the action website had been talking or blogging about these events; we were hoping a large audience, particularly one that cares about the community overall, would take notice. I know thanks to my stats tracking that L.A. Fitness and Crunch have both hit this post. IP and I were planning on developing more personalized communications, too.

I’m removing your phone number from your comment because this is a public forum and I’m getting a bunch of hits today. I don’t want your personal information to be so easily accessible to visitors who are here for reasons other than the gym post.

By: Lawrence Posner

Lawrence Posner — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:51:01 +0000

This kind of communicaTIONSAMONG THE POTENTIAL VICTIMS WILL NOT HELP MUCH with a bankruptcy judge. The letter of objection is not forceful enough about the obligations to the members in their capacity as creditors. We need to send messages by email and/or telephone to the entire membership ASAP and facilitate communicaTIONS TO THE JUDGE AND 7 OTHER INTERESTED PARTIES. And we need a clearer picture of the offer by teh former owners so we can clarify to the court what we want to say yes to and why.

For example, my son and I are both members. We have an outstanding contract for personal training with almost $1,000 prepaid. We object to the LAFitness offer because of the following in addition to the issues mentioned in the objection letter from other members:

The LA Fitness offer makes no reference to honoring the contracts with us and others who have made prepayments for membership and/or training which would be costly to us.

The location of RCSC is very convenient to us within walking distance and when we bike or drive to RCSC there is ample free parking. LAFitness is a car ride away and has no free parking.

The prevailing fees at LAF are _________[ to be filled in after checking what is accurate].

The former owners of RCSC have made an offer to buy RCSC woth terms much more favorable to the member/creditors and to other creditors including keeping the RCSC facility operating with the current staff and honoring the commitments of Crunch for memberships and training contracts.

Lawrence Posner