Life Time’s opening day pitch: ‘Disney of a healthy way of life’

Life Time Athletic Country Club leads one local fitness studio to fold but others don’t fear the industry giant.

The founder, chairman and CEO of Life Time Group Holdings sat in the first-floor bar at the Aug. 11 opening of his 160th club and explained how Life Time stands so far above the crowded fitness marketplace that it doesn’t have to worry about competition. 

“Our goal is to create an incredibly exclusive experience but offer it inclusively to all kinds of people,” Bahram Akradi said at the Life Time Athletic Country Club in Downtown Palm Beach Gardens. “To do that you have to create a place that has a magnetism. … It has to be a completely elegant, Four Seasons-like experience every single day.”

He urges his employees to think of it like Disney.

“There were amusement parks before Disney showed up,” he said. Disney “came to Orlando but they built magic. They didn’t build an amusement park. They created extraordinary what was ordinary in other places. And Life Time is Disney of a healthy way of life.”

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Lockers for 700: Life Time fitness gears up for July opening

REI Co-op also to open at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens this year even as construction tears up shopping center’s north end.

It’s still more than two months before the Life Time fitness center opens at Downtown Palm Beach Gardens but residents can still play a game of pickleball, check out the stationary bikes or even practice yoga.

The three-story center on the north end of Downtown has been under construction since 2019 but, in anticipation of its July opening, the Minnesota-based fitness giant has opened a preview center in the former west elm store and is offering free Wednesday morning classes.

Continue reading “Lockers for 700: Life Time fitness gears up for July opening”