Luxury health-club chain set to start building new Las Vegas facility
A luxury health club chain expects to start building a new location in Las Vegas in the next few months.
Life Time founder Bahram Akradi said in an interview this past weekend that construction on its long-planned southwest valley facility, across from Ikea, should be underway within the next 60 days.
Heavy equipment is already on-site.
Project plans have called for a three-story, 125,500-square-foot building with areas for weightlifting, fitness classes, tennis, and indoor and outdoor pools, as well as nutrition coaching, children’s activities, massage, and “injectable services such as Botox and dermal fillers,” Clark County records show.
Minnesota-based Life Time, which boasts 180 clubs in the U.S. and Canada, operates a location in Summerlin and another in Henderson, where it also built a high-end apartment complex next door called Life Time Living.
‘Perfect third location’
Akradi, who spoke with the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Saturday at the Henderson club’s outdoor pickleball courts, noted that the southwest valley is rapidly growing and that Life Time’s existing clubs in Southern Nevada both have wait lists.
Its current project site, at the southeast corner of Durango Drive and Sunset Road, spans 15 acres, and Akradi said he is saving a portion for possible future development.
“It’s the perfect third location for us in this market,” said Akradi, chairman and CEO of Life Time Group Holdings.
All told, its new project in Las Vegas is poised to bring development to what had long been a giant hole in the ground, after a bubble-era project under prior owners went nowhere.
Las Vegas and Irish developers teamed up in the mid-2000s to build a multi-tower project there called Sullivan Square. Work crews excavated the site, but ultimately, like numerous other high-rise condo proposals in Las Vegas from that era, Sullivan Square was never built.
Lawsuits were filed over the project, and the developers left behind a vacant property whose excavated portion, according to a former listing broker, was roughly 30 feet deep.
Life Time purchased the site in fall 2019 for $14 million. Clark County commissioners approved its project plans in early 2020, shortly before the pandemic upended daily life and devastated the economy.
‘Ravages of COVID’
Along with countless other sectors, the health club industry faced turmoil during the pandemic, given the government-mandated business closures, capacity restrictions and mask requirements that also sought to help end the public health crisis but couldn’t have been pleasant for people exercising.
The crater across from Ikea was eventually filled with dirt. Then this past December, the Clark County Building Department issued a commercial building permit, valued at $29 million, for Life Time’s new project, records show.
Akradi attributed the yearslong wait to the company managing its balance sheet “through the ravages of COVID,” adding Life Time slowed development and focused on its finances.
Now, he said, the company is in its best shape ever, and “we are basically expediting our growth again.”
Life Time wants to open an average of 10 to 12 new locations annually, according to a securities filing, which showed the company made around $156 million in net income last year, up more than double from 2023.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
