The new LA Fitness gym that opened Monday in Mission Viejo is so big it makes you wish you were in better shape, so you could walk from one end of it to the other.
It’s so big you feel compelled to count all the pieces of machinery on the second floor, as if you’ve got obsessive-compulsive disorder. I counted 97 stationary bikes, elliptical machines and stair climbers, most of them with HD screens attached. In the downstairs spin room I counted 50 silvery bikes, including the instructor’s.
It’s the biggest gym the Irvine-based company has constructed west of the Mississippi River — 62,000 square feet, inhabiting the cavernous former Mervyns on Alicia Parkway near the I-5 ramps.
You’ve got to be kidding. Who needs a gym this big? The company, which has had its eye on the property since Mervyns declared bankruptcy in 2008, says workout-crazed O.C.ers need it. Bill Horner, senior vice president and chief real estate officer for LA Fitness, said 70,000 cars a day make their way down Alicia and past the Alicia Towne Plaza, which has undergone a $6 million renovation to make way for its new flagship tenant.
“The demographics justify it,” Horner said. “And when you think the club is going to do as well as we think it will, you have to have that equipment count.”
Otherwise people will be waiting in line for a machine, and we can’t have that.
Horner used giant prop scissors to cut a blue ribbon to officially open the gym, in a ceremony attended by the mayor of Mission Viejo and a few dozen other people involved in the project. He then led a tour of the building, starting out in the kids’ play area, which is about the same square footage as my house. Maybe the most impressive room was the stretching area, full of mats and balance balls. Unlike other gyms, where stretching’s clearly something to be done on members’ own time and in their own space, between the squat bars, this room’s large enough to play soccer in. There’s also a full-size basketball court, six racquetball courts and a three-lane lap pool with jacuzzi.
The Mervyns was 84,000 feet on two floors, and unlike the ex-Mervyns barn LAF took over in Kent, Wash., it doesn’t share the space. So it was always going to be big. But the average LAF is only 45,000 square feet. The only larger LAF Horner could think of is in Lake Success, N.Y., on Long Island, in a converted foundry. It’s 96,000 square feet.
The company, in an arms race with rival 24 Hour Fitness, plans to open a new facility at Culver and Barranca in Irvine, and another one at the Kaleidoscope mall on Crown Valley in Mission Viejo, a site where a Ballys and Crunch tried and failed to make a go of it.
Mission Viejo hopes the Alicia LAF revitalizes the town center, and others are hoping to ride the gym’s coattails as well. During Horner’s tour, I noticed a fit couple wearing workout gear instead of jackets and ties like the other attendees. Joel Eisenmann and his girlfriend Sherry Zheng signed a lease to open a nutrition-and-supplement store called Nutri-Stop Alicia as soon as they heard LAF had signed a 15-year lease at the mall.
Their shop is around the corner, and Eisenmann says business has been a little slow since they opened in October. But “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t dramatically increase.”
If you build it, they will come. And sweat, and spend.
