The VIP Workout

The Arizona Republic, Jun. 23, 2006

For the Valley’s fit and fabulous, the health club is the new country club.

The luxury gym is about more than spinning classes and treadmills. With membership rosters boastingCEOs and professional athletes, high-end gyms offer members entrée into an elite social circle along with ski trips to Telluride, Colo., private pedicure rooms in the spa and wine tastings.

Sunday breakfast at the Gainey Village Health Club & Spa at Scottsdale’s Gainey Ranch is packed with toned men and women noshing on whole-grain bagels, low-fat egg dishes and smoothies.

“I eat there often; I do the Sunday brunch,” said Michael Kanko, 27, of Scottsdale. “You’ll see these beautiful women there, just lounging around and reading the papers.”

No group tracks upscale gyms, but fitness-trend experts say their numbers are increasing, particularly in affluent areas such as Maricopa County, the fourth-most millionaire-heavy county in the U.S.

DMB Sports Clubs, which runs the four upscale Village Health Clubs & Spas in the Valley, is evaluating Valley neighborhoods to add locations. “People are looking to create an environment that’s really a health club, not just a fitness club,” said Brooke Correia, a spokesperson for the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, based in Boston. “They want to make it more of a lifestyle – they have valet parking, concierges, dry-cleaning, beauty salons, in-club spas, day care, restaurants. They have it all.”

The gyms are filling a niche in an increasingly crowded market. In Arizona, the number of gyms has more than doubled in 10 years, outpacing the 34 percent population increase.They’re also filling Americans’ desire for luxury.

Today’s aspiring class may not live like millionaires, but they buy Starbucks lattes, save for a Gucci status bag and splurge on a gym membership. In this way, the luxury gym market mirrors the luxury retail market, which is one of the fastest-growing segments of the industry.

Just as a latte is more than a cup of coffee, upscale gyms are more than places to work out.

Basketball networking

The Village Health clubs in some of the toniest sections of the Valley – Scottsdale’s DC Ranch and Gainey Ranch areas, Phoenix’s Arcadia neighborhood and Buckeye’s Verrado development – are among the Valley’s most luxurious.

“We measure ourselves with how well we can compete with area country clubs,” said Carol Nalevanko, president of DMB Sports Clubs, which run the Village clubs.

At the Gainey Village location, Phoenix Suns star Steve Nash plays pickup basketball with the children of millionaires; at the DC Ranch location, women who resemble extras from The O.C. sip wine on the veranda, which looks out on the McDowell Mountains.There aren’t just blow dryers and curling irons in the women’s locker rooms, but flatirons, for that blown-out-in-a-salon look. You can even leave your shoes to have them buffed while you work out.

Women wear Stella McCartney for Adidas tops and sorority T-shirts.

That’s what Alison Lienau, 23, of Phoenix, was wearing when a woman approached her at the Arcadia location.

“This older woman came up to me and said, ‘Oh, you’re a Kappa, too.’ And then she invited me to all these ritzy Kappa events up in Paradise Valley,” said Lienau, who has been a Village member with her family since childhood. “The kind of people who go there, they really have certain things in common.”

It’s what you get for an enrollment fee of $1,490 for a single membership and monthly dues of $136. It costs $2,190 for a family to enroll and $245 a month.

For an additional $25 a month, you can have your name engraved on a locker plate. One in the women’s room at the DC Ranch Village location reads “DIVA.”

The DC Ranch gym is where Deanna Clarkson O’Connor, 45, of Paradise Valley, met her husband four years ago.

“I don’t go there to network, but it’s something that naturally happens,” the owner and publisher of Item magazine said.

Kanko and his business partner, Dave Petersen, 28,of Scottsdale, have worked out at the Gainey Village gym for six months. Since then, they’ve found a new banker, public-relations manager and several new clients for their luxury whirlpool business, Wasauna. Petersen even faced Nash on the basketball court.

“I joined initially because of the luxurious feel, but the real draw is the people,” Kanko said. “They’re just a really high-caliber group. I’ve made business and personal contacts there, all in just casual conversation.”

Gymlike country clubs

As gyms become more like country clubs, country clubs are morphing into gyms, expanding or adding fitness facilities to stay competitive, said Tom Finan, publisher of Club Management, a national industry magazine based in St. Louis.

In 2004, 42 percent of country clubs offered gymlike amenities, compared with 33 percent in 1998, according to the Club Managers Association of America.

“Clubs are spending major money to do fitness facilities,” Finan said. “It’s part of the overall marketing of the club. You’ve got to have day care, the best machines, spinning, classes. Clubs are even putting (in) spas.”

The goal: to create a more intimate gym for members.

At the Paradise Valley Country Club, with a joining fee of about $80,000 the fitness staff has increased from two people to 10 after a recent $28 million remodel. The gym is the most popular area of the club, said general manager Steven Richardson, with 3,000 to 4,000 users each month, compared with the roughly 2,500 rounds of golf played each month.

“Not everyone plays golf, but most people do work out,” he said.

Similarly, the clubhouse at the Arizona Country Club in Phoenix has been demolished for remodeling that will turn it into a new kind of club, one with a 4,800-square-foot fitness center offering cutting-edge equipment and Pilates classes. It’s scheduled to reopen in 2007.

Trying to keep up

The proliferation of luxury gyms, those that blend the sleek modernity of a W Hotel with circuit trainers, has driven up the interior design and offerings at moderately priced gyms.

Soon, Life Time Fitness will open two locations that feature exercise studios with movie screens, giant fans, about 6,000 square feet of child-care space, indoor and outdoor water slides and pools, cafes and Aveda concept salons.

“Fitness technology has even trickled down . . . to regular gyms,” said Kent Wipf, public-relations manager at Life Time Fitness. “Everyday runners now use heart-rate monitors and oxygen-consumption testing, and we work these technologies into classes.”

Even Valley of the Sun YMCAs are working to keep up, adding classes, bigger day-care programs and climbing walls.

Still, there’s no comparison to the luxury gyms.

At the DC Ranch Village location, the women’s locker room smells of citrus-mint and linen. Stacks of towels sit next to acrylic water jars filled with lemon slices that are regularly topped off by uniformed staff.

Out in the cardio workout section, which smells of vanilla, machines overlook the mountains and desert, but most of them are mounted with 12-inch flat-screen TVs.

Just before class starts in the cycling studio, illuminated with black lights, a man sets down his gym bag, a Louis Vuitton valise.

In the weight-lifting area, a poster details how CEOs see their physical fitness as key to their professional success.

And that’s the point.

These are places where members don’t go to just lower their cholesterol. They’re places they go to raise their bottom lines, professionally and personally.

From top: The dining area at Gainey Village Health Club & Spa provides another networking opportunity for members; women participate in an exercise class; Deanna Clarkson O’Connor of Paradise Valley tones up.