What would you say is the largest retailer in Manhattan?
New Yorkers’ first guess might be the hometown Duane Reade or its simulacrum CVS, chains so ubiquitous they’ve been blamed for nothing less than ruining the city as we know it.
Whole Foods, with massive stores housing aisle upon aisle of pricey groceries, takes up a good amount of space. And the big department stores like Saks and Macy’s muscle their way in with the sheer size of their behemoth stores.
But it’s actually the luxury gym Equinox — with its space-gobbling locations and growing pipeline — that occupies the most retail space in Manhattan.
And the company is ramping up its growth, boosted by a $1.8 billion investment last year.
“There’s no cap on how big we can grow in Manhattan,” said Jeff Weinhaus, Equinox’s head of development. “I can’t say with any confidence how many clubs we can grow to, but we’re not done.”
Equinox opened two locations last year that brought its footprint to 1.3 million square feet. That was enough to push it past the 1.25 million square feet occupied by Macy’s, according to figures provided by Equinox.
The company now has 31 of its luxury fitness clubs open in Manhattan, and is negotiating a lease for its 33rd. With an average club spanning north of 40,000 square feet, that all adds up.
By now, everyone knows what Equinox is. With its grind-culture ethos and walls full of Grown Alchemist products, Equinox is the ne-plus-ultra of the designer-leggings, influencer luxury-fitness lifestyle.
When the company goes to open a new location, everyone (customers and landlords alike) have pretty much already been sold. But that wasn’t always the case.
Equinox opened its first location in 1991 on the Upper West Side. The company was acquired by private equity firms in 2000, and six years later Related Companies chairman Stephen Ross and his fellow executives bought a controlling stake.
In the beginning, the strategy was to open flagship locations that could help position Equinox with customers. Weinhaus said that when Equinox got to about a dozen clubs the strategy switched to filling in the spaces between locations.
“The first 15 were very easy, and then it became very strategic,” he said.
A good example is the 30,000-square-foot lease Equinox signed in November for its 32nd location at Hudson Square Properties’ 75 Varick Street in Hudson Square. Weinhaus said it was right in the “bullseye” between nearby locations in the West Village, Soho and Tribeca.
Equinox’s growth was fairly linear in its earlier expansion years, adding 8 to 10 clubs a year and one or two new cities. That slowed during the pandemic, when the company opened just five gyms between 2021 and 2023. Last March, Equinox landed a $1.8 billion investment by the investment manager Sixth Street and private equity firm Silver Lake.
Weinhaus said they started ramping up working on new deals over the past few months and plan to get up to full speed this year. He said the company is looking at more new-build locations now where they can help work with developers to design space. That means they’re not necessarily looking at spaces they can move into right away, but they’re willing to wait in some cases a few years.
In addition to building out markets like Manhattan, Los Angeles and Miami, the company is now tapping second-tier cities like Charlotte, Denver, Seattle and Atlanta. Equinox just announced it plans to open a new club in Boca Raton.
Equinox has seen some more competition as of late, most notably from Life Time Fitness. The competitor opened its first New York location in 2016 at the Moinian Group’s Sky rental tower on the Far West Side at 605 West 42nd Street. It now has seven clubs in Manhattan, including an 80,000 square foot location at Harry Macklowe’s One Wall Street condo conversion.
There’s also been a movement in the fitness space away from the sleek design made ubiquitous by Equinox toward more nostalgic, mid-century inspired “sporting clubs.”
Weinhaus said the pitch to Sixth Street and Silver Lake was that the company’s financial performance is predictable and strong. To grow the business, they needed to open new clubs.
“We can double the size of the business,” he said. “110 clubs can be 220 clubs-plus.”
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