Luxury health and fitness club Life Time opened a location in Evanston Saturday morning. The 60,000-square-foot fitness center sits above the Sherman Avenue Target, on the former premises of the LA Fitness.
The Evanston location is the international fitness club’s 14th in the greater Chicago area. It features open-concept cardio, strength training, recovery, group workout and athletic court spaces.
The new athletic club is the second Life Time in the country to house the company’s MIORA Performance and Longevity Clinic, where members can work with doctors, nurses, dietitians and personal trainers to create individualized health and wellness programs.
Natalie Bushaw, vice president of public relations and corporate communications at Life Time, said the company gutted the former LA Fitness to build a brand-new space for members.
“It was an opportunity for us to take a really, really great space in a really phenomenal location in Evanston and create and bring Life Time to life,” Bushaw said.
Life Time will be open from 4 a.m. to midnight Monday through Friday and from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Memberships start at $289 a month for adults and an additional $60 per month per child under 14.
Life Time’s membership prices are much higher than many other gyms in the area, which typically hover around $40-80 a month. But, fourth-year Medill student Alexia Kadota-Browner said the high sticker price is an “investment” into her health and wellness.
“Being a member my whole life, I’ve firsthand seen the experiences and the effects that this brand has on the quality of life,” Kadota-Browner said. “You never know how much of a positive impact the healthy way of life can have on you until you try it.”
Kadota-Browner said she was one of the first members of her hometown Long Island, New York’s Life Time locations as a child. She completed her certification to be a trainer and group exercise instructor when she turned 18, and took an internship with Life Time’s River North location at the end of her sophomore year at Northwestern.
The day she learned Life Time was opening an Evanston location, Kadota-Browner said she applied to be a group exercise instructor. She will now teach classes there twice a week.
“I find the fact that their name is Life Time to be really funny because I can definitely relate to the fact that this has been a part of my life for almost all of my lifetime,” Kadota-Browner said.
Bushaw said the new Evanston club is employing around 100 team members, a few of whom are NU students, like Kadota-Browner. Bushaw said she expects the majority of members to be Evanston residents and families, rather than NU students.
Downtown Evanston Executive Director Andy Vick said he is optimistic that the opening of Life Time will attract more potential customers to downtown Evanston.
“Those people are going to be potentially dining in our restaurants before or after their workout, or they’re going to meet with friends for a drink after their workout, or they’ll pass by a store and see that that’s something they might want to come back to,” Vick said.
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