In the fitness area (opposite page) exercise equipment is mixed with
trendy sofas and artistic lighting, while elsewhere around the club the feeling is very much one of a luxury hotel
distant. All wear name badges including little flags that denote the languages they speak – an impressive number are multi- lingual and Union Jacks seem omnipresent. Sitting on the rooftop and enjoying the morning sunshine as I ate a well- deserved, post-swim breakfast – the quality of facilities honestly inspires you to get up and work out – the Marks & Spencer ads with which all UK readers will be familiar kept popping into my mind: “This is not just a club. This is an Aspria club.” If I’ve sounded effusive so far, apologies – but this has to be the best club I’ve visited to date, both for its top-class facilities and for its immaculate standards of service.
EMBRACING EXERCISE As Aspria CEO Brian Morris explains: “We’re a membership services company that provides excellence in many areas,
“ We’re a membership services company that provides excellence in many areas”
but that doesn’t concentrate solely on the fitness component.” And yet the fitness component is very impressive – a two-storey offering that combines great kit with plenty of space and light to invite you in and make you genuinely excited about working out. Both floors have large windows looking
out over the gardens, and the colour scheme is gentle – browns, creams, lots of wood. There’s plenty of space, and the gym, at least during the daytime, is peaceful – perhaps in acknowledgement that most people bring their own music anyway. There’s also a real sense of flow between gym and recreational, non- workout space: an open doorway links
the first floor area of the gym with the restaurant, and there are leather sofas, standard lamps and even a pool table encroaching into the gym space. Mirrors in the gym are also more ornamental than the norm – huge and gilt-framed, they add a touch of glamour to the free weights and functional areas. Unusually for a gym, the result is
simultaneously calming and stimulating – less the adrenaline-fuelled vibe of ‘must work out’ present in so many gyms, and more an enticing ‘come in and feel uplifted’. The equipment is top-class and very varied – it’s real kid in a candy shop stuff. As you enter on the ground floor, there’s a large Pavigym-floored functional
THE UHLENHORST STORY W
hen Health Club Management interviewed Aspria CEO Brian Morris in 2009, he spoke of a site in Germany that he’d been working on for 10 years, since before Aspria was even founded. It was, he said,
“horribly, horribly political” but that, when it opened, it would be unique in Germany: the first time a development had involved a three-way partnership between operator, sports club and local government. That site is Aspria Uhlenhorst. Morris explains: “The Klipper Club was formed over 100
years ago, when the property would have been on the edge of the city. Over a century later, it’s now in a high quality, centrally positioned, primarily residential district. “The partnership is between the City (Stadt Hamburg),
Klipper Tennis and Hockey Club (Klipper THC) and Aspria. We have a direct relationship in property terms with the City of Hamburg, which retains the freehold subject to Aspria having a long lease of the site. There’s a parallel agreement with Klipper concerning certain rights and privileges that Klipper members have the benefit of following redevelopment of their club.
october 2012 © cybertrek 2012 “The overriding challenges were ironically not in reaching
an agreement with Klipper but in getting all relevant political parties to agree to support the partnership. Each political party would confirm its support to the Aspria project individually, but they could never agree between themselves how the partnership should move forward. “Over the 13-year period that the project took from start to finish, there were a number of low points when it seemed that intransigent politicians would defeat this very special project. It took us threatening to withdraw completely to break the political deadlock. “Shareholders, with support from our banking partner, have
invested over l25m. We demolished the existing clubhouse and tennis facilities and undertook a comprehensive redevelopment of the site, maintaining a junior hockey pitch and multi-sports area for children. We used a local Hamburg- based architect for the basic building and a British interior design company, SparcStudio, for some of the fit-out work. The rest of the design and specification work was carried out internally by the Aspria team.”
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital 39
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