The Bay Club Co., San Francisco, has acquired the 11 Spectrum Athletic Clubs for an undisclosed sum. The purchase will move the Bay Club Co.'s country club style into the Los Angeles area as it rebrands the facilities to include the fitness, sports, hospitality and family model it has been known for.
The Bay Club Co. will add more than 33,000 members to its growing family with the addition of the new campus sites in Santa Barbara, Thousand Oaks/West Hills, plus two campus sites within Silicon Beach (covering Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey, Playa Vista, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula). The Bay Club's campus concept consists of a variety of locations within a sub-geographical area that include fitness centers, athletic clubs, swim and tennis complexes and country clubs.
With the acquisition of Spectrum, The Bay Club Company now operates 23 locations across 10 California campuses—five in Northern California (Marin, San Francisco, Redwood Shores, Silicon Valley and Los Gatos) and five in Southern California (Santa Barbara, San Diego and three in Los Angeles). The Bay Club Company has additional plans to expand, both within its core California markets as well as attractive markets outside of California over the next 12 months.
"We are thrilled to expand our Southern California footprint as a natural extension of our well-established presence in Northern California," said The Bay Club Co. President and CEO Matthew Stevens. "We're looking forward to introducing our unique model to the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara markets. We've built this model to truly engage with our community by focusing on what matters most to our members: a safe place to enjoy friends and family—a place where everyone can be happy."
Stevens calls the Spectrum Athletic Clubs a strong fitness product that his team will transition over a 30- to 90-day period.
"This is a really strong fitness product, and we believe we can upgrade the hospitality amenities, the sports amenities and the family-oriented content to diversify the product and make it more well-rounded and very consistent with what we have done both in San Diego and northern California," Stevens told Club Industry.
The move reunites Stevens with the Spectrum facilities. For five years, Stevens served as CEO at Spectrum until 2008 when he was named president and CEO at The Bay Club Co., which at that time was called Western Athletic Clubs.
Stevens plans to invest more than $10 million in his former facilities during the next 12 months. The renovations will help the facilities mirror The Bay Club Co.'s signature lifestyle amenities at its current 12 locations in the San Francisco and San Diego markets. Members can expect to see hospitality upgrades including the introduction of The Bay Club Co.'s Seventy-Seven Social Club, Connect Business Suites, boutique retail shops, full-service Sanctuary Spa, plus the expansion of its partnership with Los Angeles-based Café Vida. The Bay Club Co. also will expand the Southern California sports offering to include tennis, golf, squash, basketball and indoor/outdoor aquatic complexes.
"As part of the Spectrum Athletic Clubs acquisition, we are pleased to announce that Continental Development Corp. of El Segundo has decided to join The Bay Club Company equity ownership group," Stevens said.
Richard Lundquist, owner and president of Continental Development Corp., said, "We are excited to be participating in the next chapter of The Bay Club Co.'s expansion and continuing the current momentum. We look forward to assisting The Bay Club Co. in building the active lifestyle membership experience to enhance customer engagement and loyalty."
Continental co-developed and, for nearly 30 years, has co-owned the Spectrum Athletic Club's South Bay flagship fitness facility in El Segundo's Continental Park.
This isn't the first big sale for Spectrum Athletic Clubs. In 2012, the company sold its 11 clubs in San Antonio, TX, to Gold's Gym. Bud Rockhill, who at one time had been part owner of Club Sports International (which later became The Wellbridge Co.), became CEO at Spectrum in 2009 when Stevens moved to The Bay Club Co. Rockhill had been rumored to be looking for a buyer for the California locations for several years.
The Bay Club Co. ranked No. 9 on Club Industry's Top 100 Clubs list last year with 2013 revenue of $139.5 million. Spectrum Athletic Clubs ranked No. 26 in the list with 2013 revenue of $50 million. According to the documents submitted by both companies for the Top 100 Clubs list, memberships range from $238 to $450 at The Bay Club Co. Memberships at Spectrum range from $99 to $169.