St. John physical fitness devotees found the doors at the Gym in Paradise locked up tight this morning. A sign on the door said “closed temporally,” but quien sabe, who knows? But if you ask me, it doesn’t look good.

Closed (Temporarily?)

The trouble in paradise began when the Swans and Bertolino’s who had been running the gym, some say almost as a public service, sold out to a businessman from America. Supposedly, the new owner originally had the intention of coming to St. John and operating the gym as a lifestyle-business combination kind of thing.

But, as rumor has it, personal problems and/or business setbacks caused a change in plans and the gym was run on an absentee owner basis, rarely a good deal anywhere and maybe worse on St. John.

To make a gym work financially is a tricky situation and depends on aggressive marketing and quite a bit of expertise. Meanwhile the place has to look good to attract new members.

Apparently, with expenses outweighing income, the new owner now has to pump more money into the operation. Meanwhile he’s sitting home in America and isn’t even getting a good workout for his money, and at some point he’s had enough of that and let’s the management on island know that the gym has to pay its own way.

So services are cut back, bills aren’t paid and the place starts looking kind of rundown. Machines break down and they sit there broken – no money. Furthermore there’s no business plan put in place to increase memberships, no motivation for the management to push for more members and with this negative cash flow, I can pretty much bet that bills weren’t paid and it began to look like the end was near for our beloved neighborhood gym.

Into this mess comes Pilates Bob.   Bob understands the dynamics of gym management,and he enthusiastically tries to turn things around. I’ve been around gyms pretty much my whole life and I’d have to say that Bob did a pretty good job. He initiated specials, increased membership, improved cash flow and saw to the basic maintenance of the equipment and the various systems, often doing much of the work himself,

But with rent that some say was as high as eight grand a month, a WAPA bill that must have been frightening , payroll, insurance  maintenance, etc., etc., the chips were really stacked against the guy and this morning the Gym in Paradise at the St. John Marketplace where the elite meet was closed up.

Hopefully, the sign saying “temporary” is telling the truth. Failing that, we would hope that at least those people who recently signed up for membership can get refunds and that the employees who are already owed back wages will be paid for their labors.

Options
Meanwhile if the gym doesn’t reopen, the options for workout fanatics aren’t that great. The only other gyms on the island are at Caneel Bay and the Westin. The gym at Caneel is for guest only, so that’s out.

The Westin has a nice gym with state of the art equipment, but like so many other aspects of our “Millionaire Island,” regular people will be priced out at $135/month dues and a $150 signup fee.

Or there’s always this option for the self motivated and disciplined: WORKING OUT AT HOME!!!

The At Home Work Out

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Life on St. John USVI, St. John USVI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.