Philly-area gyms are still building back from COVID closures. They’re dealing with lower enrollment, rising labor costs, and supply chain issues.

When William G. of Virtua Health. Rohrer Gym reopened in September 2020, after pandemic shutdowns that began six months earlier, company executives expected many members would be slow to return.

But not that long.

The massive Voorhees facility, with its full gym and three pools, will now close for good at the end of November, unable to survive any longer with a membership only half what it was before the pandemic, when the center had more than 4,000. members.

“In fact, we had one of our best years in 2019, and we haven’t been able to recover from that,” said April Schetler, assistant vice president of community-based programming at Virtua. The drop in membership resulted in a “significant shortfall” for the gym, she said, though she declined to specify how much.

“We have been trying to fight this battle,” Schetler added, “but without success.”

The impending closure is one of the most severe outcomes in the fitness industry’s ongoing battle to win back business lost during COVID-19. Nationwide, 25% of health and fitness facilities that were operating as of March 2020 were permanently closed at the end of last year, according to a analysis by a trade group for the industry, IHRSA.

Now, the surviving gyms are not only tasked with bringing back members who converted to home or outdoor workouts, they must also deal with staff shortages, rising labor costs, inflation and supply chain problems.

“Our biggest headache was the team.” said Lisa Alberta, director of marketing for The House Health and Wellness in Wayne. “If a treadmill failed, trying to get replacement parts” was a challenge.

Several gym owners and managers said they experienced delays replacing free weights, cardio machines and other equipment.

A royal fitness in Barrington, Camden County, employees have gone to Target or Wawa to restock the refrigerator with bottled water due to problems with bulk orders, fitness director Danielle Zacamy said. At the same time, the price of stocking the facility’s juice bar has increased “tremendously,” she said.

As Royal struggled to fill staffing vacancies, particularly for certain positions like barre and yoga class instructors, the gym needed to raise employee wages to compete with other part-time job possibilities, Zacamy said. To keep up with these rising costs, new member dues increased by $3 a month earlier this year, she said.

Still, “we’re doing pretty well,” Zacamy said, noting that the gym has more than 3,000 members and only a few hundred fewer than in the pre-COVID census.

“It’s not effortless,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot of things to try to be proactive.” That includes continuing to schedule half of its classes outdoors and the other half indoors this fall to accommodate members’ COVID comfort levels.

If the 40-year-old gym didn’t own the building, Royal Fitness wouldn’t have had the same flexibility to offer classes outdoors, Zacamy said. Combined with rising rental costs, he added, the business may not have been able to survive otherwise.

In Wayne, La Maison Health and Fitness has also experienced the benefits of ownership, which has been especially helpful given the sharp decline in members, from around 4,000 before the pandemic to 2,000 now, said Alberta, the chief marketing officer.

“It’s definitely a big hit for the bottom line,” he said. “Fortunately, since we are family owned, we own our building. I know that many gyms across the country and throughout the area had to close because they couldn’t pay their rent.”

Like Royal Fitness, La Maison has reduced the number of scheduled classes, Alberta said. The Main Line facility also stopped offering a cafeteria, she added, but kept the complimentary towel service.

To help offset the drop in membership, the club is now selling three tiers of memberships: one is cheaper and the other is more expensive than what was previously offered. The highest level is a $120-a-month VIP package that includes personal training and unlimited classes, Alberta said. The club also expanded its marketing this summer, she said, with a no-registration special that in June drew 60 new members, most of them former members who had left during the pandemic.

” READ MORE: As of April 2020: Decimated by pandemic shutdowns and layoffs, Philadelphia’s fitness industry struggles to stay afloat

A Riverton Health and Fitness Center in Burlington County, owner Jason Cioci said it has regained a couple hundred members in the last few months and now has 800 members. Before COVID, he said, the center averaged about 1,200.

With less money coming from memberships, Cioci said he has reduced his staff from six people to two. It also increased the price of the new membership from around $25 to $35.

Because of these decisions, “we are in a good position to move forward,” he said.

The center’s situation would have been quite different, he said, if hundreds of longtime members hadn’t allowed the gym to continue collecting its dues even when it was closed during the closures.

“I would have lost the building,” Cioci said. “I would have missed the gym. He would have been desperate.”

In Camden, meanwhile, Rick Gaines personal trainer He said he got more business from people who weren’t comfortable going back to traditional gyms and working out with others indoors.

“People who never thought they would go to a personal trainer have come to me because of the virus,” said Gaines, who was also encouraged to open a supplement store connected to her Body Designers Personal Training Studio. “They just didn’t feel comfortable going back to the gym.”

At the soon-to-close Rohrer Fitness Center, members tend to be older, Schetler said, and one of the reasons Virtua gave for the decision was “to change fitness preferences among the public.”

“A lot of people canceled right away, saying they’d come back when they felt safe,” Schetler said, and many still haven’t felt comfortable enough.

“The fitness industry has changed a lot during the pandemic and people committed to exercising have found other ways,” he said. “They turned to virtual media or just went out and went for a run or a bike ride.”

And Virtua, a nonprofit health care system, has the option of eventually repurposing the gym space for something else. The medical and surgical offices are located in the same building as the gym; Schetler said officials haven’t made a final decision on how to use the space.

As for the Rohrer staff, they are all employed by a fitness management company, not Virtua. One reason for announcing the closure early is “to help ensure staff have time to map out their next steps,” Virtua spokesman Daniel Moise said.

And Schetler said he’s confident the remaining members of Rohrer’s gym will be able to find plenty of other options nearby.

“In the region, there is no shortage of gyms,” he said. “We believe that strategically our investment can be better used.”