Equinox Gym Coming to Villa Marina Marketplace

Equinox Fitness Club will be coming to the Villa Marina Marketplace after signing a lease for a 30,000-square-foot space at the sprawling entertainment and retail center.

Chicago-based property management and leasing firm Jones Lang LaSalle said in a statement that the addition of Equinox marks a major milestone in the $25 million redevelopment of the 419,000-square-foot Villa Marina Marketplace, which is in Del Rey with a Marina del Rey postal designation.

“As an anchor tenant at Villa Marina Marketplace, an upscale Equinox Fitness Club will serve our high-income consumers in the Marina del Rey trade area,” said JLL senior Vice President William P Huelsman.

New York-based Equinox will offer a retail store, cafe, children's club, a Wi-Fi lounge and a full service spa. The gym is scheduled to open in spring 2012.

"Our goal has always been to meet the needs of the discriminating fitness consumer who demands quality and value. If there was ever a market for Equinox, it’s clearly Marina del Rey,” said John Klein, Equinox Fitness Club's vice president of real estate.

Equinox currently has nine fitness clubs in Southern California and operates gyms in Northern California, New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Connecticut, Florida and Washington, D.C.

The redevelopment of the whole Villa Marina Marketplace is scheduled to begin this fall with an expected completion in summer 2012. The remodeled center's design will combine a sense of the beach with upscale stores and restaurants, including Gelson's, Sports Chalet and Barnes & Noble.

Jones Lang LaSalle manages the largest third-party retail portfolio in the country, including more than 300 malls, strip centers and mixed-use centers. The international firm has a retail portfolio of 269 million square feet of property under management and leasing worldwide.

Jones Lang LaSalle reported net income of $1.5 million in its first quarter 2011 earnings report, compared with net income of $200,000 for the first quarter of 2010. Revenue for the first quarter of this year was reported at $688 million, an increase of 18 percent compared with the first quarter of 2010.