Massive gym to open in Invercargill adding to city's building boom

Thursday, 3 December 2020

Archer Construction project manager Matt Mclaren, left, with Russell Cunningham Properties general manager Vicki Corkill and Russell Cunningham Properties director Alex Cunningham outside a 3000sqm building being constructed in the Invercargill business park. The building will be two thirds tenanted by CityFitness gym.

Work is under way to build a new 2000sqm gymnasium in Invercargill, adding to the city's building boom.

The new CityFitness gym will be located in the Invercargill business park development, just a couple of hundred metres from where a Bunnings trade centre will be built next year, also in the business park.

CityFitness chief operations officer Doug Hatten said it planned to open the doors for its 24 hour, seven day a week gym in the middle of 2021.

The company had 38 gymnasiums nationwide and it offered the “lowest cost gym membership”, he said.

The facility would have about 100 car parks built beside it.

A CityFitness gym and a Bunnings Trade Centre will in 2021 be the latest additions to the Invercargill business park, a development by Russell Cunningham Properties on the site of the former A&P Showgrounds. Just 12 of the original 61 lots in the business park are still available to purchase or develop on.

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Russell Cunningham Properties director Alex Cunningham, developer of the business park in which the gym building is being built, said the addition of CityFitness, which would lease the building, was fantastic.

“Two thousand square metre tenants aren’t easy to come by. It’s a big build. And it’s creating jobs, all local trades are working on it,” he said.

With CityFitness taking up two thirds of the 3000sqm building, the final third was still available to lease.

Russell Cunningham Properties had been developing the business park for 12 years, with just 12 of the original 61 lots still available to purchase or develop on.

“We are working with a couple of interested parties on four of those lots currently available,” Cunningham said.

Invercargill’s World Health and Fitness owner Sid Cumming doesn't believe the city needs another gym, saying there are already nearly 40 places where people can pay to exercise.

“It’s quite baffling but there’s been a massive boon of enquiries over the last few months. We thought it was going to slow down.

“There’s obviously a lot of confidence out there, there’s still a lot of businesses wanting to come to Invercargill and a lot wanting to build new and expand.”

Long-time owner of World Health and Fitness in Invercargill, Sid Cumming, said there were already nearly 40 places in the city where the public could pay to exercise.

“The way CityFitness works is they come in and undercut everyone.”

CityFitness was owned by a Canadian “so the money doesn’t stay in Invercargill”, Cumming said.

He believed the opening of CityFitness would affect his business.

“It always does, that’s just the way life is, you can’t stop them from coming. The only way you can stop them coming is if Southlanders support Southlanders.”

His World Health and Fitness business received great support from Southlanders, he said.

“But every time someone opens a new business people do go, because it's bright and shiny.”

Hatten, of CityFitness, said he believed there was room in the market for more health and fitness centres given New Zealand statistics suggested just 10 per cent of people actively exercised and obesity and heart disease were on the rise.

CityFitness had shareholders in Canada but money stayed in New Zealand and New Zealanders were employed by the business, he said.

The company's prices were transparent, with Hatten saying its gym membership was from $6.99 per week, but it didn’t have a strategy to undercut anyone, he said.

“Our focus is to eliminate barriers for people [to get into health and fitness], and price is one of them.”

The gymnasium building and Bunnings announcements in the past week continues a building boom for Invercargill, with major projects already under way including a CBD block rebuild and a new Invercargill Licensing Trust hotel currently being built in the CBD.