The St. James Performance Club is shutting down its operations in Reston Town Center less than two years after opening.
The 25,000-square-foot athletic facility opened in April 2022, boasting 70 group fitness programs, turf areas, a sauna, a cycling studio and other amenities to its location at 11985 Market Street. It also added rooftop pickleball courts last summer.
A company representative told FFXnow that the last day of business is March 1.
“We have made the strategic decision to focus on the success of our Springfield, VA and Bethesda, MD, locations to meet the significant market demand we’re seeing while taking into account the changes in consumer behavior driven by the global pandemic and the new, persistent norm of remote work,” the company wrote in a statement to FFXnow.
The St. James says most employees in Reston will be given “other roles in the organization.” Members can still visit the company’s flagship sports complex in Springfield (6805 Industrial Road) and its performance club in Bethesda (6828 Wisconsin Avenue).
“The success of our flagship in Springfield and our performance club in Bethesda have created significant growth opportunities in the greater Washington region and around the country,” the company said. “We look forward to sharing more details regarding those exciting opportunities soon.”
A new group fitness facility for athletes is planning to open its doors in Reston next month.
D1 Training, a concept that emphasizes athletic-based training, will celebrate its grand opening at 1700 Bracknell Drive on Feb. 12. Located between a Trader Joe’s and a Wendy’s, the site previously belonged to a carpeting and flooring store.
The grand opening event includes a ribbon cutting, refreshments and tours of the facility.
Owner Pablo Smiraglia — who has more than 20 years of experience in coaching and sales — says he’s looking forward to taking over the business. Prior to launching Reston’s D1 Training, he worked in sales for more than 20 years and was a state soccer official and soccer coach.
“D1 is more than just creating great athletes, it is about growing fitness in a community,” Smiraglia said. “My goal is to foster a lifetime of athletic training for every fitness goal at any age, and D1 is the place to do so. Fitness has no age requirement; we cannot wait help community members reach their fitness goals.”
The company offers four age-based programs ranging from ages 7-11, 12-14, 15-18 and adults. Each program includes warmups, performance, strength, core and conditioning, and cool down exercises.
“We’re thrilled to welcome him to the D1 family and are confident in his ability to show the Reston area what they’ve been missing out on,” D1 Training Chief Operating Officer Dan Murphy said. “D1 is a one-of-a-kind fitness experience that’s built around the individual and meant to help people meet their appropriate edge.”
Founded in 2001 by former NFL player Will Bartholomew, D1 Training currently has more than 100 locations across the country, but its only other D.C.-area gym is at Pinecrest Plaza (6550 Little River Turnpike) in Lincolnia.
Vida Fitness is expected to open its flagship facility in Reston in early May, a company spokesperson tells FFXnow.
The facility is slated to open at Reston Row, the newest district that is part of Comstock’s Reston Station development at the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station.
The 50,000-square-foot Reston facility spans three levels of an office tower at 1845 Reston Row Plaza.
Vida’s gym will include a day spa, a rooftop swimming pool and lounge, a full lobby bar and cafe, hair salon, sauna rooms, locker rooms, facilties for oxygen treatment and recovery strength, and more.
Membership deals for residents within a 10-mile radius are currently being offered through the studio’s website.
The company has six other locations in the D.C. area, though the only other one in Virginia is in Ballston.
Currently under construction, Reston Row will also include a JW Marriott hotel that’s projected to open late this year.
A new gym is slated to open soon at Fox Mill Shopping Center in Herndon, giving residents another option for fulfilling their fitness-related New Year’s resolutions.
Anytime Fitness will occupy a 6,000-square-foot space at 2551 John Milton Drive in Herndon, according to the center’s leasing website.
There are currently two vacancies in the shopping center, which is anchored by Giant. Other tenants include Club Pilates, Exxon, Subway and Lucia’s Italian restaurant.
Anytime Fitness has locations in Chantilly, Fairfax, Manassas Park, Springfield, Arlington and Bristow, among thousands of other spots throughout the U.S. and around the world. Open 24 hours a day, the gym offers personalized fitness plans, group workouts and one-on-one training.
The company did not return a request for comment from FFXnow by press time.
Image via Google Maps
Body Fit Training, a studio that offers custom workout plans, is coming to North Point Village Center in Reston.
The business will take up nearly 2,700 square feet of space at 1422 North Point Village Center. It was tentatively expected to open in the first quarter of next year, but the prospective franchise owner has had to step back, necessitating a temporary pause in development.
The company’s corporate team is currently conducting a search for new ownership.
Pavan Katariya, the company’s developer for Northern Virginia, says the Reston location is designed as a neighborhood space.
“We are basically personal training that’s done in a group fitness setting,” Katariya said. “So, unlike at other gyms where there’ll be one trainer to 20 or 30 or 40 people, we have multiple coaches in each of our classes, and so, it’s a much more curated and hands on experience and we are also entirely strength training-focused, which is not something that other studios do.”
He says the company identified a need in the Reston market.
“There wasn’t a good strength training studio that combined personal training and group fitness together in that area, and so, they thought it would be something that people in that area would really like,” Katariya said.
A location in Tysons is expected to open in November. It will be Body Fit Training’s first studio in the D.C. area.
Angela Woolsey contributed reporting to this story.
Pickleball fever has officially taken hold at The St. James, a sports, entertainment and wellness club in Reston Town Center.
The Reston location will now offer two separate outdoor, turf rooftop areas with four pickleball courts, in addition to strength-building and cardio equipment. There will be more than 70 weekly group classes.
The company, which also has locations in Springfield and Bethesda, says the addition of its pickleball club demonstrates the company’s commitment to the community’s needs.
“Our mission at The St. James has always been to exceed the expectations of our members and provide them with world-class training opportunities for growth within sport and in life,” said David Hoye, general manager of The St. James Performance Club in Reston.
The club opened at 11951 Freedom Drive last year. The main facility in Springfield has an Olympic-sized swimming pool, field house, rock climbing wall and other recreational amenities. It also offers 50 group classes per week, sports leagues and numerous camps.
Court use is complementary for members, but non-member rates are $10 for drop-ins and $25 per court reservations.
Updated at 2:15 p.m. on 6/29/2023 — The new gym tenant coming to Tysons West appears to be Club Studio Fitness, a new brand recently started by Fitness International, the same company that owns LA Fitness.
Earlier: Another gym appears to be angling for the former 24 Hour Fitness spot in Tysons West.
A lease has been signed for the 48,891-square-foot space on the third floor of 1500 Cornerside Blvd, according to a site plan from retail broker Rappaport.
Christian Kingston, Rappaport’s senior director of leasing and brokerage, told FFXnow that the company had no information it can share at this time. However, a different site plan from Tysons West developer JBG Smith suggests the tenant may be California-based LA Fitness, which is shown in the same building as Walmart and District Taco.
An LA Fitness customer service manager confirmed that the company is working on a Tysons location, but there’s no timeline for when it might open. When asked for further information about the plans for Tysons West, she said the company was “not interested in participating” in a news story.
Fairfax County issued a permit for commercial alterations for a “club studio” at 1500 Cornerside on April 13, and an electrical permit for LA Fitness was issued on May 22.
“Fitness Club Tenant Remodel to include revised lighting layout, new plugs and circuitry for cardio equipment, update fire alarm devices, adding some specialty workout rooms,” the electrical permit says.
LA Fitness has hundreds of locations across the U.S. and Canada, including gyms in Herndon, Springfield and Newington.
After closing on a temporary basis at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 24 Hour Fitness permanently shuttered its Tysons West gym in the summer of 2020. The company filed for bankruptcy that June, shedding 100 locations nationwide.
Three years later, signs for 24 Hour Fitness can still be seen above the door and in the reception area, which was occupied by a desk with computer monitors, refrigerators and a display stand, as of last weekend. It’s unclear whether the furniture was new or leftover from the previous gym, though the main club area looked cleared out.
In other Tysons West news, Walmart is working on a renovation of its nearly 80,000-square-foot store.
“A better Walmart is in the works,” a sign near the customer service desk said. “You may encounter some changes around the store as we build our new pickup and delivery fulfillment center.”
According to a sign outside the store, renovations will be completed in September with a grand re-opening scheduled for Sept. 8.
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A Northern Virginia gym aimed at women hopes to flex its way into the Town of Vienna this summer.
StarFit Studio is expanding from its existing Arlington and Alexandria locations to the Cedar Park Shopping Center. The business has leased a 1,740-square-foot space at 266 Cedar Lane, according to property manager First Washington Realty’s website.
Construction is currently underway in anticipation of an August opening, according to StarFit co-founder and CEO Allie Baier.
“We are so excited about opening a location for Vienna women!” Baier said by email. “We think the small community atmosphere of StarFit works perfectly for the Vienna community. It’s a great place to meet new people, or come with friends!”
StarFit started in 2011 with its first studio at 6440 Landsdowne Centre in Alexandria. It added a second location at the Lee Harrison Shopping Center in Arlington around 2017, according to its Yelp pages, where it has almost all five-star ratings.
The business was inspired by a desire to create a place for weight-lifting and strength training where women could “feel safe and confident,” Baier told Northern Virginia Magazine in 2020.
By focusing exclusively on women, the gym can offer tailored workouts designed for its specific demographic, rather than “cookie-cutter classes built for the masses,” she said.
According to Baier, StarFit specializes in small-group and personal training, with an eight-person limit for each group class.
In addition to weights, the gym provides resistance bands, sandbags, stability balls, cable machines, rowers, and other strength and conditioning equipment.
“We focus on fundamental, functional movements and exercises that have worked for hundreds of years in fitness,” Baier said, quoting from the company’s website. “We stay away from gimmicks, fads or a one-size-fits-all cookie cutter class formats, which inevitably leads to boredom and plateaus.”
Sign-ups have opened to get on a pre-sale list for the Vienna studio.
(Updated at 12:55 p.m. on 6/14/2023) A new indoor climbing gym is crawling its way to Fair Oaks Mall.
Movement, a nationwide company of indoor climbing gyms, plans to open Movement Fairfax by the end of 2024. The 37,000-square-foot space will feature a boutique-style yoga studio, lifting platforms, locker rooms, fitness zones and a gear shop.
The gym includes 27,000 square feet of climbing terrain spread across two floors. The highest wall is 50 feet.
“We’re excited to bring Movement to Fairfax and offer a one-of-a-kind fitness experience to the NoVa community,” Movement CEO Jeremy Levitt said in a press release. “We have an amazing team of climbing coaches, yoga teachers, fitness instructors, and front desk team members who are eager to share climbing, adventure, and a ton of fun with the Fairfax community.”
The Fair Oaks location will also include classes for climbers of all levels, along with yoga and group fitness classes.
Virginia has one other Movement gym in Arlington. There are also locations in Maryland, California, Oregon, Texas, Colorado and Illinois.
Until Movement opens next year, Fairfax County’s only dedicated indoor climbing gym is Vertical Rock Climbing and Fitness Center in Tysons. There are also rock climbing walls in The St. James in Springfield and at Life Time gym in Reston.
A fitness studio that quietly opened near The Boro in Tysons during the COVID-19 pandemic will finally get an official welcome this week.
P20 EMS Fitness Experts will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its Tysons studio this Friday (May 19) — more than two years after the location opened inside OneLife Fitness at 8250 Greensboro Drive.
Supported by the Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce, the ribbon-cutting is also intended to mark the company’s rebranding to P20 from its previous name of Personal 20, according to co-founder and owner Connie Ruiz.
“Realizing our clients have been referring to us as P20 for years, we decided it was a good time to rebrand and refresh with a new name and a new logo,” Ruiz said. “We changed our tag line as well to reflect that we are EMS Fitness Experts.”
EMS stands for electronic muscle stimulation, which involves devices that send electric impulses to mimic muscle contractions. Used in physical therapy as well as workouts, EMS devices can help strengthen or tone muscles but, by themselves, don’t result in a major change in physical appearance, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
The Tysons studio is P20’s second location.
A native of McLean, Ruiz and her husband Pedro discovered EMS in Portugal and wanted to bring the concept to the U.S. With their daughter Carmen, the couple launched Personal 20 in January 2017 with a studio in Herndon.
The business claims to offer “a 20-minute workout with all the benefits of a 90-minute workout.”
“We love what we do, helping our clients get stronger, healthier and happier with P20,” Ruiz said. ” …We are not only the first to bring EMS to [Northern Virginia], but we are confident that our quality-controlled program and continuous education for our trainers has us on the right path to success for our clients.”
A cocktail reception to celebrate the rebranding will be held from 4-6 p.m. at the studio on Friday, with the ribbon-cutting taking place at 5 p.m.
