Friday, January 20, 2023

[CLOSURE ALERT] Intown Athletic Club Closing After More than Four Decades

Athletic Club Northeast, an intown Atlanta mainstay for more than four decades, announced Wednesday that it's closing for good.  The club, located between Briarcliff and Cheshire Bridge Roads at 1515 Sheridan Road, has been in business since 1978, according to online records.  The club did not provide a reason for the closure, only that it will close permanently as of January 31, 2023. 

"For decades, Athletic Club Northeast has played an important role in the lives of North Druid Hills residents, surrounding communities and businesses. The club has been able to celebrate countless pool parties with you, the Atlanta Braves winning the World Series, ALTA Tennis, the Olympics, and popular class after popular class in our studios."
 The club announced in a prepared statement.     

"During this time, members and teammates have created a vibrant group that connects for all types of fitness as well as countless social events both inside the club and around town. The cliché “work hard, play hard” definitely describes the healthy community you’ve helped develop. That’s what makes this announcement so difficult. On Tuesday, January 31, 2023, Athletic Club Northeast will permanently close its doors."
The club added.  

Members with whom ToNeTo Atlanta spoke were surprised and disappointed that the club would give so little notice in advance of its closure.  Strangely, in our preparation for this post, we discovered a job posting on LinkedIn for "General Manager" at Athletic Club Northeast that was posted just two weeks ago but is today "no longer taking applications."  

Despite the lack of an explanation for the sudden closure, a source at the club told a ToNeTo Atlanta reader that the property's landlord "doesn't want us here anymore" and has "other plans for the property."  

According to its website, Athletic Club Northeast is owned and managed by Wellbridge, Inc., a Greenwood Village, Colorado-based club operator with other facilities under management in Maryland, Colorado and New Mexico. As of Friday January 20, the Facebook and Instagram pages for Athletic Club Northeast have been deleted and it has also been removed from the corporate Wellbridge website.  

The club is located in an area that has seen intense multifamily development in recent years.  Cortland North Druid Hills (originally Accent North Druid Hills) and Cortland Oleander East (originally Oleander) are located at 7 Executive Park Drive and 10 Executive Park Drive, respectively, and include more than 650 apartments in total.  Cortland Oleander West (originally Gables Sheridan) is located at 1514 Sheridan Drive and includes another 329 apartments.   

Greystar is currently under construction on another multifamily development at 50 Executive Park South that will deliver several hundred more apartments to the area.  The Greystar project is part of Emory University’s plan to transform the dated Executive Park office complex into a $1 billion “health innovation district.”

According to DeKalb County property records, SNH WELL PROPERTIES GA MD LLC is the current owner of the roughly eight-acre Athletic Club property.  DeKalb County valued the property in 2022 at just over $6.6 million. 

Are you a current Athletic Club Northeast member?  If you are, where do you plan to join?  What would you like to see open in place of the club?  

Please share your thoughts below  

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad. Probably just another multi housing moving in. The value of the land must be worth it to the property owners.

Anonymous said...

Wellbridge also recently sold Concourse Athletic Club, which will remain open - for now.

Ham said...

Does anyone else feel that the increase in multifamily developments around Atlanta is a bad thing?

Anonymous said...

Yes the traffic around Emory is getting horrendous!

Anonymous said...

Agree with Ham 100%.

Anonymous said...

I was a member for over twenty years but the last three ir so years club had gone downhill, dirty conditions, & lack of regard for members changing rules to suit management. Many resigned along with me. Had to get an attorney. You had to try to not care about the quality of club to stay another day,another month. It was inevitable

Anonymous said...

Dat deepenz on duh fambly…gnowhaimsayin?

Anonymous said...

The address for Athletic Club Northeast is 1515 Sheridan. According to the county website, the property at that address is owned by:
SNH WELL PROPERTIES GA MD LLC
C/O THOMSON REUTERS
PO BOX 56607
ATLANTA GA 30343-0607
— Not clear to me who or what that is.

Anonymous said...

I was a member in the eighties when it was The Sporting Club. They added a world class weight room with Nautilas machines. After it became Athletic Club Atlanta they moved the machines into the squash courts. What a shame. I left.

Anonymous said...

Another one is closing with the same landlord...

https://news.yahoo.com/bel-air-athletic-club-owed-000200368.html

Anonymous said...

Their next door neighbor is Midtown International School and rumor is they are complaining about lack of room and they may move. Combined both properties would be an attractive opportunity. Hopefully for the community it won’t be another apartment community.

Anonymous said...

I worked there in the mid 80s when I was in high school. It was a pretty cool place to work and some of the local professional athletes worked out there since it was one of the nicer clubs in town. My aunt and uncle got married at the John L. Sullivan's restaurant that was connected to it. Sorry to hear it is closing but not all that surprised with the redevelopment in that area and the property values. Tennis courts aren't exacty the most profitable use of in town land.

Anonymous said...

I'll be the rare voice that will say that I don't think that the multifamily developments actually increase traffic to any great extent. IMO it's business/workplaces that attract/release huge number of vehicles at fairly dense time frames (eg everyone trying to get there around 8am, everyone departing around 5pm) that cause the most traffic backup.

Neighborhoods and subdivisions, particularly on weekends, just have a trickle of cars going in and out.

Anonymous said...

It’s always interesting to hear from long time Atlantans the history of locations you pass everyday. I didn’t know about the previous name or that it had a restaurant. It must have been a showplace in the 80s.

Now as someone who uses the already crowded LA Fitness on North Druid Hills I expect an influx of their former users, as I’m sure it’s the closest gym for many of them.

Anonymous said...

They are closing one one in Tampa, fl - Harbour island Athletic club and in Maryland - Bel Air Athletic club. They are all being evicted by landowner due to not paying rent.

Anonymous said...

Wellbridge also closed a facility in St. Louis last year. According to their website, they have one remaining health club in the eastern half of the country.

Eric said...

I work for Thomson Reuters, and seeing the property owner's address in c/o of Thomson Reuters is very puzzling because TR is a media/publishing company, which makes no sense in connection to an athletic facility. TR's business model was as a holding company that has bought up dozens of companies over the years, and maybe this was an inadvertent acquisition.

I've long told my supervisors that TR, which is based in Toronto, with offices all around the world except anywhere in the Southeastern U.S., that they should open an office in Atlanta, if not for the Thomson side of the business, which builds software for law firms, global trade, tax and accounting, then for the news side of the house at Reuters considering all the news that comes out of the region and being the international HQ for CNN, which means there's a ton of talent here.

Anonymous said...

Updated reports says that it will be transformed into a Lifetime Fitness. One of the few locations Lifetime acquired that is “used”. Lifetime normally builds their property from ground up. This case is rare and few.

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