LA Fitness, Irvine, CA, announced Monday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets for the remaining Lifestyle Family Fitness clubs in Florida.
The acquisition, if and when it closes, will result in the extinction of Lifestyle Family Fitness, which last year sold nine clubs to Life Time Fitness, Chanhassen, MN, and closed several other clubs.
Terms of the deal between LA Fitness and St. Petersburg, FL-based Lifestyle Family Fitness were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to various closing conditions. Sources told Club Industry in recent days that LA Fitness has been working out agreements as to which clubs to operate and which clubs to close.
“While the parties are hopeful that the transaction will be completed within the next several weeks, there can be no assurance as to when or whether a closing will occur,” LA Fitness said in a statement.
Lifestyle Family Fitness has 33 clubs in operation in Florida. It had 55 clubs prior to last November’s Life Time deal, terms of which were not disclosed. In addition to the nine clubs sold to Life Time (two each in Indianapolis, and Columbus, OH, and five in North Carolina), Lifestyle got out of the Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina markets entirely. It closed six clubs in Ohio, two in Indianapolis and one in North Carolina, while selling the remaining two Ohio clubs to its founder, Geoff Dyer. Lifestyle later closed two more clubs in Florida.
Stuart Lasher, chairman and CEO of Lifestyle Family Fitness, confirmed news of the agreement Monday in a letter to employees obtained by Club Industry.
“In the months that followed [the exiting of the northern markets], we evaluated our option to remain an independent company or sell to a larger organization,” Lasher wrote in the letter. “We took into consideration what would be in the best [interest] for all three constituents: our team members, members and shareholders. After careful consideration, the Board of Directors has made the decision to sell all of the Lifestyle Family Fitness clubs in Florida to LA Fitness.”
This is the second major acquisition for LA Fitness in the past seven months. Last November, LA Fitness acquired 171 Bally Total Fitness clubs for $153 million. That transaction was announced three days after the Lifestyle-Life Time announcement.
After Lifestyle opened its first club in 1982 in Lakeland, FL, Lifestyle doubled in size in 1991, then doubled again in 1995. From 2000 to 2007, Lifestyle grew from seven clubs to 40 clubs and from $12 million to $100 million in revenue. In 2005, Lifestyle purchased eight of the former California Fitness Centers in Columbus, OH, from Ray Wilson and Greg Rowe.
Lifestyle was No. 10 on Club Industry’sTop 100 Clubs list last year with a reported $102.4 million in 2010 revenue, a 3 percent decrease from the previous year.
LA Fitness was No. 2 on last year’s Top 100 Clubs list with an estimated $1 billion in 2010 revenue.