In-Shape Buys Local Health Club

“The owner of Total Fitness in northeast Bakersfield has sold the gym to another health club chain that plans to close it and open a new, larger location nearby later this year. Check out our expanded coverage of business and economy news. In-Shape Health Clubs’s acquisition of the gym became effective Monday. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. The Stockton-based company intends to honor all of Total Fitness’s roughly 1,300 memberships and hire all the club’s 20 or so employees at their current rate of pay, said Rob Farrens, vice president of marketing and sales at In-Shape, which has three other gyms in Bakersfield and a total of 34 statewide. ‘We’re honoring up to a year’ of pre-paid memberships, Farrens said. Total Fitness opened in March 2007 after owner Leigh Pozas bought out 7 Steps Fitness, an existing club at that location, 3201 Mall View Road. It was her first coed gym; she owns the two Total Woman Health & Fitness clubs in town. ‘It just turned out to be a bigger animal than I bargained for,’ Pozas said of the 2007 purchase, adding that the recent sale allows her to refocus on Total Woman. In response to customer requests for a new workout place in the northeast, Farrens said, In-Shape plans to open a 30,000-square-foot gym — roughly twice the size of Total Fitness — in about six months at the former Rite Aid at 2681 Oswell St. ‘Now we have the town covered,’ he said, ‘so we’re pretty excited.’”

http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/724428.html