interview


WORLD WORLD


FOCUS


STEVE KASS T


he history of American Leisure is in many ways the American Dream made real. At the age of 18, Steve Kass was working as a


lifeguard on Coney Island in Brooklyn, the gloriously kitsch seaside resort beloved of New Yorkers. But Kass wasn’t interested in the amusement park, boardwalk or hot dog stands. “Across from my post, there was


The founder and CEO of American Leisure and his COO talk to Rhianon Howells about the evolution of the 43-year-old company from a New York-based pools and fitness operator into a global leader in the delivery of ‘lifestyle’ services


30


a new luxury housing development with a swimming pool,” he recalls. “I found it so interesting that a residential development should be offering recreational facilities… that was the start of the business.” Fast-forward more


than four decades and the leisure management company Kass set up in 1967 as a three-man operation now employs more than 500 people and operates 75 leisure facilities – including pools, fi tness centres, spas and


Read Health Club Management online at healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital


lifestyle amenities – primarily within luxury housing developments, but also within hotels and resorts and as standalone sites. Within the New York metropolitan


&


area, where most of its managed facilities are based, the company is a byword for luxury lifestyle services in a residential setting, with big- name clients including the Trump Organisation and Tishman Speyer. But although the US, and New York in particular, remains its largest market, the company’s horizons have broadened dramatically in recent years. Having already garnered international


experience through its design and consulting arm, the company signed a deal last year with Saudi Oger – a hugely infl uential Saudi Arabian company owned by Sheikh Ayman Hariri and employing more than 50,000 people – to deliver almost a million square feet of leisure facilities, plus ongoing management services, to the King Abdullah University


july 2010 © cybertrek 2010


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