When a luxury gym operator bought a giant hole in the ground across from Ikea, the prospect rose that a failed holdover from the bubble days in Las Vegas would finally be something other than a desert pit.
Months later, the pandemic turned life upside down, causing huge job losses and other chaos as people stayed home fearing the outbreak and forced businesses to go dark.
The health club proposed by Life Time has not yet taken shape. But after more than a year of turbulence, it’s still on the drawing board, and construction is slated to begin next year.
Life Time spokeswoman Natalie Bushaw told me this week that the 15-acre property on the southeast corner of Sunset Road and Durango Drive “is still a planned Life Time sports resort destination.”
“It looks like it, but that could of course change if we plan to start construction sometime next spring with an opening at the end of 2023,” she added.
According to district documents from early last year, the three-story facility would be 60 feet tall, 125,500 square feet, and include weightlifting, indoor and outdoor pools, fitness classes, athletic fields, spa and salon services, and more.
Designed for a high-rise project during the doomed boom in the mid-2000s, the Life Time site is in a fast-growing part of the valley, between the existing Summerlin and Henderson sites.
Furthermore, it’s not the only project near Ikea that was on the drawing board before the pandemic and is still in the pipeline.
Dapper Companies founder J Dapper said this month that he hopes to get a building permit in the next 60 to 90 days for The Bend, a retail complex in Sunset west of Durango that would weigh on many food and beverage stores.
He would begin vertical construction immediately after obtaining permits and complete the first phase of the project about 10 months later.
Like myriad other sectors, the fitness club industry has faced turmoil and issues amid the pandemic as government-ordered business closings to slow the spread of COVID-19, capacity restrictions and masking requirements that are also designed to help end the public health crisis, but can not be comfortable for people who exercise.
Overall, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, around 6,800 US fitness clubs had permanently closed, lost an estimated 1.4 million American jobs and lost $ 20.4 billion in revenue after the outbreak of the pandemic by the end of last year.
Bushaw said Life Time has seen “solid consumer demand for our offerings” and is “very pleased having come out of the last 17 months”.
It introduced a $ 15 digital membership that offers on-demand and live fitness content, and opened several facilities this year, she said.
Clark County commissioners approved plans for Life Time’s Southwest Valley Club early last year after the Minnesota-based fitness chain bought the site for $ 14 million in the fall of 2019.
The seller, Harcourt Developments from Ireland, had teamed up with a company from Las Vegas in 2006 to build a project there called Sullivan Square. Residential units, retail and office space were planned, but the giant project, like many others from Las Vegas’ easy money days, went nowhere.
The developers left an empty lot, part of which is the giant hole in the ground – a glaring reminder of the wild housing boom and devastating crash in southern Nevada.
Will the hole be filled? Will the fitness industry return to what it used to be?
We’ll find out soon enough.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.
