West Cobb is set to get a fancy new gym. "Club Studio," an upscale gym from Fitness International, LLC, is to open in place of multiple vacant spaces at The Avenue West Cobb (3625 Dallas Highway).
The new Club Studio will open in place of three vacant spaces at the suburban lifestyle center currently anchored by Barnes & Noble. Specifically, Club Studio will occupy a space created by combining the spaces left vacant by Pier 1 Imports, Charming Charlie, and Simply Mac, all of which closed after their respective bankruptcies. (Spirit Halloween has regularly occupied the former Charming Charlie seasonally.)
This past October, New York-based Acadia Realty paid $62.5 million for The Avenue West Cobb, a collectively 260,000 square foot retail center. The seller, PGIM Real Estate, had paid $81.3 million for the shopping center in 2006. The purchase was seen as a "value add" opportunity for Acadia, and while Club Studio is a nice improvement over vacant space, it's not the Trader Joe's that many people wanted, and that the center's former sibling, The Avenue Peachtree City, recently added.
Club Studio is positioned as a premium gym experience - akin to Life Time [Fitness] - and is the sibling of LA Fitness. There is currently just one Club Studio in metro Atlanta, in Brookhaven, where it opened in place of a former LA Fitness at TOWN Brookhaven this past August.
If the pricing at the Brookhaven Club Studios is any indication, prospective members in West Cobb are in for some serious sticker shock.
According to the Club Studio website, pricing for the Brookhaven location currently starts at $189 per month and goes up to as much as $249 per month. There is no LA Fitness in West Cobb but a location on the East West Connector in Austell offers memberships starting at $29.99 per month topping out at $39.99 per month.
(A nearby Crunch Fitness offers memberships starting at $9.99 per month that top out at $29.99 per month.)
The Irvine, California-based gym operator currently operates more than three dozen facilities under the LA Fitness branding in the greater metro Atlanta area. (A location in Kennesaw closed this past December after about fourteen years in business.) Overall, Fitness International has more than 700 locations across the country.
The Brookhaven gym features five specialized studios: CS4 (Run. Ski. Row. Reps.), yoga, cycling, boxing, and reformer pilates, as well as more traditional gym offerings like free weights, cardio equipment, a lap pool, and basketball courts. Also available are so-called "holistic wellness" offerings like compression therapy, full-body cryotherapy, and saunas. Club Studios also feature a retail boutique and an on-premise "beaming" cafe with smoothies, bowls, and coffees as well as a curated assortment of packaged vitamins, supplements, beverages, and snacks.
The first Club Studio debuted in December 2022 in the company's home market of Irvine in southern California. Club Studio Irvine opened in place of a former Orchard Supply Hardware, a bankrupt regional hardware store. Today there are about twenty Club Studio locations open with about thirty more coming soon, according to the Club Studio website.
There is reportedly at least one more Club Studio in the works in metro Atlanta, where, as in Brookhaven, it would replace an existing LA Fitness. The West Cobb location should debut in 2027 followed by the other metro Atlanta location in 2028.
Have you ever been to a Club Studio? What is the maximum amount you would pay for a monthly gym membership? Are you excited about Club Studio opening in West Cobb?
Please share your thoughts below.
19 comments:
We used to go to Brookhaven LA fitness all the time. It was busy. Since we still frequent the Costco across the way, we have noticed almost no one ever entering or leaving Club Studio. Good luck
California is absolute trash 🗑️ ... So LA Fitness converted a successful location into a more luxurious upscale gym called club stupido I mean studio. With that they injected the LA price of 3 times the normal rate of la fitness. Do they think we are stupid? This is Georgia. Normal people with common sense. Now they are going to open in West Cobb?? An area where normal people work hard for their money an don't intend to just give it away! They would rather pay for kids college education or a second home on the beach. This isn't Buckhead. They must be stuck on Hollywood - building it and they will come. Ring ring ... OZ said to come back home!
As I was starting to read this, I thought the monthly dues would run 4 figures. Surprised to see it's as low as it is. Before LAF acquired Australian Body Works, I paid $225 a year. That contract/deal was honored by LAF, but after several years of pi$$ing away money, I had to quit. LAF was not convenient, and pretty dirty. Good luck to Club Studio.
Although I agree with you, you could have just said that this is a poor fit for that area.
I'm betting against it as I don't think that area can support those monthly numbers...it's just not that type of area. Crunch is a block away as noted.
They should open up in Henry County. There is a lot of money in Henry County and the residents are tired of having to leave to spend their hard earned money.
Did you know that among counties in the US that start with H and end in Y Henry is ranked first in per capita income?
Also Henry has the twelfth highest per capita income in the country for counties with five letters.
So as you can see from those two facts Henry County is very wealthy and ready for business.
Not as prosperous as Harry County though.
Did you know that the local residents often refer to it as Hank County, for short? And it ranks number one in per capita income for all counties named Hank in the world! The Hanks are tired of leaving their borders, let’s let them empty their overflowing pockets here!
Very bad fit. Won’t work. I’ve lived here 32 years.
The part of Avenue WC in the picture used to be Banana Republic and Ann Taylor and stores like that but Atlantans can't support that type of retail any longer.
Here’s another interesting tidbit that shows how Henry county is open for business. If 41 Fortune 500 companies relocated their headquarters to Henry county Henry would then have more Fortune 500 hqs than any other county in the US. It’s time for people to see and understand how prosperous Henry county truly is.
They have tons of locations in the Atlanta area. What are you talking about?
So many of them have closed.
I'm 86 and I live here 59 years. It will be a great addition! We also like the Belks
I was a member of the Roswell LA Fitness for many years. It was accessable and the montly rates were manageable. So many so-called "luxury gyms" in Atlanta have closed, there was one in the former nightclub district and one in Brookhaven at that shopping center where Peachtree Garden apartments used to be
So many of them are open. What are you waiting for? 😀
That’s just false. The parking lot is packed every day. The gym is always busy no matter the time of day
I personally think this is a great add for those of us already paying that premium for boutique fitness like orange theory and club Pilates. You’ll get all of that and more with this addition for around the same price
I was a member of the Brookhaven LA Fitness and now a member of the Brookhaven Club Studio. The above comment is nonsense. When it was LA Fitness, the parking deck would rarely be parked past the second level. Now, it is regularly parked to the 4th level, and the other day, I had to park on the very top of the deck where there is no roof! Club Studio is always packed tbh. On the gym floor, it feels about the same density as the LA Fitness was during its heyday, but the studio classes are always full and they have a hyrox training center on the second level that's also pretty full, the basketball court is always being used, etc. The way it is designed inside, there are more places to pack people without the main floor feeling too overcrowded. However, between 5pm - 8pm, its usually unbearably packed, so I tend to hide in the recovery area until it thins out some. The Brookhaven spot is 65,000-sf, whereas most premium LA Fitnesses that are being converted to Club Studios run around 40-45k-sf, so without a lap pool and basketball court, they can probably jam in a CS in that spot.
My only complaints with the Brookhaven Club Studio is that it doesn't have a steamroom, they refurbed the old LA Fitness sauna but made the seating area smaller, and they never replaced the nasty LA Fitness floor tile in the locket rooms/sauna/showers. It feels like they ran over-budget and couldnt finish the buildout. The LA Fitness shower curtains were also being used until about a month ago, they finally replaced them with transparent glass doors that have a frosted horizonal stripe across the middle part. I paid $29/m at LAF for 13 years, and now I pay $278/m for the basic membership + the full recovery addon. It's worth it to me.
I was really hoping that the next location would be in Midtown, but it makes sense for them to put one in this location to draw from East Cobb/Alpharetta/Sandy Springs submarkets.
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