Bulking up the apartment gym
Apartment developers are investing in pumped-up gyms as they seek to attract and retain residents who care about fitness — or aspire to work out
The following article appeared in the May 15, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
Gyms are getting tricked out with high-tech equipment, in-person trainers and specialty lighting for influencer videos; are salt rooms and cold plunge pools coming next?
At The Prospect apartments on South Mint Street in South End, a portion of the extensive gym has a monkey bar bridge, an Olympic weight station, free weights, a smart mirror loaded with virtual classes and Crossfit-friendly equipment. The gym’s second level has a cardio area with Peleton-type bikes, treadmills and a window-lined group exercise room overlooking Bank of America Stadium. Here, Celia Smart adjusts equipment she ordered for the gym, which she designed.
by Cristina Bolling
Gone are the days when apartment developers could toss a set of stationary bikes, weight machines, treadmills and a yoga mat in a room, label it a “gym” and call it a day.
Now, apartment gyms are often full-on fitness centers that can compete in offerings with full-scale gyms, loaded up with Olympic weightlifting stations, high-tech stationary bikes, yoga rooms and customizable “bridges” with rope trainers and monkey bars.
For developers, it’s the fitness arms race of apartment amenities, as they try to capture potential residents searching for a community that best fits their lifestyle — or the lifestyle they aspire to.
And for residents, it’s a chance to meet their fitness goals closer to home while meeting their neighbors, and potentially save money they’d spend on a gym membership elsewhere in town.
For the last decade, Celia Smart has been part of the apartment gym transformation.
As a senior project manager for Atlanta-based Ready Fitness, she outfits apartment gyms across the Southeast, including in her home base of Charlotte, from the design stage to placing each piece of equipment and refreshing established apartment gyms.
One of the gyms she’s recently designed and outfitted is in The Prospect, a new Greystar apartment community on South Mint Street in South End, where a 15-foot monkey bar bridge is flanked by an Olympic lift station and racks of weighted balls.
Residents can take a fitness class or run on a treadmill while gazing at Bank of America Stadium, and there’s even an alcove with great lighting overlooking uptown that Smart designed to be a place where social media fitness influencers can shoot videos of themselves (in front of a high-tech smart mirror, if desired).
When she started in the industry a decade ago, “you were good if you got a $50,000 project — that was amazing,” Smart said.
Now, her budgets on normal to high-end gyms — like the one at The Prospect — have pumped up to the $100,000 to $120,000 range, she said.
“It’s been fascinating to watch,” Smart said.
Developers often bring Smart in two or even three years before apartments will open, so they can construct buildings with fitness spaces in mind — think cavernously high ceilings, extra underground support to bolt in large apparatus and proper ventilation and electrical circuitry.
And as important as the equipment is for serious exercisers — which in many cases include new college graduates who are used to off-the-charts university gyms that are selling features to high schoolers — Smart says developers are “pretty dialed in” to the fact that gyms need to look great on tours these days.
“A lot of [developers] like to do something that’s either what they call the ‘wow factor’ — put a ‘wow factor’ piece in — or a space that seems like a ‘complete wow,’ which means murals and customized music, and it might have more of an industrial look with its flooring,” Smart said.
Gyms designed with the population in mind: Gyms are one of the top three amenities apartment hunters seek out when deciding where to live, said Katie Maloomian, senior director of development for Crescent Communities, which operates apartments all over the country, including five communities in the Charlotte area.
(The other two must-have amenities are swimming pools and dog parks, Maloomian said. Interestingly, community movie rooms that were popular a decade or two ago have been replaced by podcast rooms or even guitar rooms, Maloomian said.)
Large-scale developers think long and hard about how the populations in different communities are likely to want to exercise — or simply move their bodies — when designing fitness spaces.
At Crescent’s new Ballantyne apartment project, NOVEL Ballantyne, Maloomian said they didn’t expect residents to be big on high-intensity workouts, so they loaded it up with cardio equipment and high-tech bikes and mirrors with virtual classes.
“That niche demographic was anticipated being a lot more tech-savvy,” Maloomian said.
The company’s University City apartment community, however, NOVEL University Place, has residents who seem to crave outdoor and work-friendly fitness options more than iron-pumping stations, so there are walking trails and treadmill desks where people can exercise while on the computer, Maloomian said. That community also has a “stretching cage” for those who want to stretch their muscles.
“At every community, we try to offer something different, so that when you’re touring the fitness center, it has this kind of talking point, or it kind of just ignites a little bit of interest,” Maloomian said.
‘Wellness’ as the next amenity frontier: Maloomian said Crescent is looking into the fitness “recovery” realm as they plan for future amenities.
“The fitness realm continues growing. Recovery with the cold plunge — that's something we've seen recently in our exploring. The salt room is another one we’re exploring.” (Cold plunge tubs or pools have frigid water that is believed to decrease inflammation and ease sore muscles, among other benefits. Salt rooms are spaces with dry salt particles in the air, which are designed to improve breathing and health.)
Smart, whose clients include Crescent, said she, too, is already seeing apartment communities look at adding cold plunge pools, steam rooms, saunas and salt rooms.
“The amenities for wellness are getting ready to take off,” she said. “Fitness is expanding to no longer just being a gym — it's wellness. It’s overall well-being.”
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of the Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman