Construction starts in Broomfield on state?s largest athletic club

Business Report Correspondent BROOMFIELD — A new athletic center in Interlocken with views of the Flatirons will be the largest club in Colorado when it opens in October 2003.

Construction on the Lakeshore Athletic Club-Flatiron at 300 Summit Blvd. began Aug. 28 with a groundbreaking attended by the mayor of Broomfield as well as the top echelons of management from Lakeshore Management Group, based in Chicago.

?This is really a prototype for where we want to take the athletic community as far as lifestyle,? said John Terrell, executive vice president of real estate development for Lakeshore Athletic Clubs. ?A lot of what we’re doing is different from the typical facility.?

Among those differences is the size of the complex. With more than 150,000 square feet of floor space, the $25 million facility will include not only exercise rooms but also a full-day spa, restaurant and onsite concierge. In addition, the 10,000-square-foot Kidshore, a club designed for children’s fitness, targets the family market. Lakeshore’s public relations department claims it will be the largest athletic club in the state.

?This is a style of business culture that we developed in our Chicago clubs where we’ve dealt with families over the years. We’ve learned how to treat this kind of community,? said Jordon Kaiser, owner and founder. In addition to the Broomfield club, Lakeshore owns and operates a number of other clubs, including two in Chicago and a new Reebok Sports Club opening next month on Canary Wharf in London.

Kidshore is separate from the rest of club while still allowing parents and children to participate together. Amenities include monitored facilities, an outdoor water play area, a children’s lounge with computers, and a child-care center for infants and toddlers. These services provide the groundwork for the club’s primary market, which is not the corporate members you might imagine.

?We decided when we started to imagine this club to really focus on the family market,? said Janet Long, Lakeshore’s vice president of development and marketing. ?It’s really nice to see the development of this community. With all the residential areas here, there’s going to be a lot of family programming available.?

The secondary market includes corporate members. While many larger companies in the area such as Sun Microsystems and Storage Technology Corp. have gymnasiums on site, Lakeshore is trying to add a lot more.

?Most companies have a gym, and that’s exactly what it is: a gym,? said Long. ?What we’ve developed is a lifestyle club so a person can come away from the corporation, relax by the pool, take a sauna or work out. It’s a completely different environment.? Lakeshore also will be offering unusual amenities such as teambuilding exercises on a 50-foot climbing wall.

?Here, instead of having a meeting in the board room, they can come and have a meeting on the climbing wall. It builds camaraderie and really develops that teamwork,? said Long, who added that Lakeshore will be offering corporate memberships through companies around the area. ?We all know the benefits of health and wellness. Especially in today’s society, the salaries aren’t always here, so it’s nice to offer a health club benefit as well.?

Lakeshore has been researching the site for more than a year after taking over the project from a local developer. However, in the face of high office vacancy rates and a tough economy, the new club wasn’t always a certainty.

?Honestly, we didn’t think this was going to happen,? said Mickey Sons, executive vice president and chief executive of Lakeshore. ?We bough the land a long time ago, and it seemed like we were going to have to flip the land and move on. After we did some brainstorming sessions, though, we got even more exited. We said we had to do this club.? Those sessions were held with Hervey Lavoie and his team from Ohlson Lavoie, an architectural firm based in Denver that specializes in club facilities.

?About 90 percent of our work is related to athletic clubs,? said Lavoie, who has designed clubs in Japan, China, England and Europe. ?We’re thrilled to have one in our own backyard here. I think it’s going to be a benchmark facility. People will be coming from all over the country to see this thing.?

Although several community recreation centers serve the surrounding area, as well as other health clubs such as The Edge in Broomfield and Bally Total Fitness in Arvada, nothing of Lakeshore’s size exists anywhere in the metro area.

?We did the demographic studies and did our homework to find that this area was underserved for the kind of world-class facility that we are going to offer,? Kaiser said. The Lakeshore staff has high hopes that the club will become a home away from home for many area residents.

?We understand that a person’s first space is their home. Their second space is their work. We like for the club to be their third space,? Long said.

The club eventually will employ more than 250 people in the area, a resource that Long says is critical to the club’s environment.

?Big isn’t necessarily better. Anyone can build a big club with a lot of equipment,? Long said. ?It’s the programming that we do, and then it’s the members and the staff that we have here. It ends up being special people not only from our members’ point of view but also from our staff’s point of view.?

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