Niche Gyms Give a Kick in the Glutes

Many people make fitness resolutions each January, so a new crop of gyms are rising to the opportunity and carving new niches.

"For a long while, it's been Gold's and Lifestyle, but high-profile gyms are too corporate and their prices are going up every year," said Jason Stross, of Broderick and Associates, who is doing groundwork for a new You-Fit gym at the Oaktree Plaza on the west end of Ninth Avenue N.

You-Fit memberships start at $12 a month, with a premium $20 membership that includes tanning. Owners Christy Berks and her father, Rick, are planning to open the first site in April and are near lease signings on two more locations for what Stross calls a "working man's and woman's gym."

For the working men and women who work late, there's Anytime Fitness, whose niche is 24-hour operation. With electronic member keys, surveillance cameras and special emergency-dialing necklaces, the gym, which opens this week at 900 Central Ave., aims for maximum convenience with security, operators say.

"Some franchises find 10 p.m. is as busy as 5 p.m.," said Shireen Hameed, who is running the Anytime franchise with her fiance, Steve Ashton. "Restaurant workers get off work late and find their friends are already winding down, so they want to come here."

Hameed said that since the couple started working on the building, they've been peppered with requests for memberships. Anytime's corporate parent suggests that having 60 customers before opening is good, but the downtown Anytime has 200 under contract and raring to go, she said.

The business has expanded twice already before opening, Ashton said. Originally planned for 3,400 square feet, the gym added 2,400 square feet next door for aerobics and other classes, and will take over another adjacent space in the coming weeks.

Ashton has designs on a west-end location, too. One of the sites he is looking at is the conversion, by Boiler Enterprises, of a dry cleaners at Park Street and Tyrone Boulevard. The architect who designed You-Fit is working on plans to turn the 5,000-square-foot former Mason's Dry Cleaners into a 9,200-square-foot gym with snack bar. That proposal is going before city officials next month for approval, but the construction could be completed this year.

The You-Fit site used to be a Zayre's, Stross said. The strip mall's anchor converted from Kash n' Karry to Sweetbay, and the whole property has become more attractive, he said, making the 16,000-square-foot project a worthy investment.

Stross said You-Fit aims to be inexpensive but also "a nonintimidating atmosphere" where the not-quite-so-fit can feel comfortable working off their holiday excess without being surrounded by bodybuilders and elite athletes. He said the facility has no special classes but will have personal trainers and will be plastered with TVs to take the mind off the work.

Anytime Fitness is also full of gadgets, including computerized cycles that allow users to race one another. Classes include the usual Zoomba and Pilates, but also something exotic called "spiral strength," Hameed said.

The business also has a mutual-marketing relationship with Hy-Tech Weight Loss, a new nutrition-oriented business next door where customers calibrate their metabolism for an individualized diet.

Anytime also has some unusual features to go along with its $140,000 equipment investment. Because cameras everywhere are necessary for overnight security, there can be no locker rooms because of privacy. Instead, the business has individual showers in private baths, something Hameed said has become its own attractor.

"We would usually have only one shower, but so many people have been asking about them, we are going to have three," she said. "Apparently, people who work downtown and play downtown want to take a shower before they go out, so some just want to be able to use that."

Anytime joins an already active downtown fitness arena, with long-standing operations City Gym, Central Avenue Fitness and Curves, among others. Hameed said the growing number of fitness centers and the demand she has seen before opening speak to the changing demographics of a city once known for its sedentary elderly population.

The no-frills You-Fit and self-explanatory Anytime Fitness join the fitness scene.