According to the Asbury Park Press, the Ocean Fitness Company closed their doors on October 3rd. This was news to some of the gym-goers (and to me) for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their 20 years of continuous operations and the recent multi-million dollar renovations at the site. From the Asbury Park Press:

Ocean Fitness Center, a health club on Route 35 at Deal Road, has closed its doors.

The club’s owner, The Fitness Company, posted the news in a letter on the door. It thanked patrons for 20 years of membership.

“We apologize for the sudden announcement and the closing of the club,” the note states.

This is weird for so many reasons. First of all, the Ocean Fitness Center was located in a great building and was the only gym in the area that had a full-size pool and jacuzzi. Believe it or not there are a bunch of us who live less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean and still demanded to have a pool at our health club! Probably has something to do with those bitter freezing months each year…

I was a member of The Fitness Company from November 2003 through May 2006. I quit the gym at that time because the renovation of the swimming pool was supposed to be a quick, 3-month project in the summer of 2005 and it actually wound up taking until last February to complete. I did, however, rejoin the gym for the summer of 2007 and got some good use out of the pool before my membership expired in September. I chose not to renew.

This is striking news because I was just planning on going back to the gym this week and setting up a time to restart my membership (likely in the middle of December after I’m done teaching for the semester and I get back from a trip to Miami). It’s weird that they’re closed.

There are other gyms in the area to choose from including Workout World, Newberry Fitness, Jersey Shore Fitness, Gold’s Gym, Pearl Street Gym, and Edge Health and Fitness Academy (among many others). None of them really strike me as a place that I’d want to join right away, though I used to be a member at Gold’s Gym and if their prices are still as high as they were last year, then there’s no way I’d go back there again.

In a best case scenario, another gym would step in and take over the vacant building where the Ocean Fitness Center once occupied (and maybe change the dreary interior from that urine yellow to a bright white). Anyway, I’ll be keeping an eye out for gym membership deals in the next few months – let me know if you find any!