No Sweat--ProFitness Takes Over Gold’s Site

Iron is being pumped again at 5120 Ralston St. in Ventura.

Formerly the site of a Gold’s Gym franchise, the nearly 16,000-square-foot facility has reopened as the independently owned ProFitness Center. Terms of the lease were not disclosed.

Open since 1992, Gold’s shut its doors in May when owner Darryl Dunn was evicted for failure to pay rent. At the time, he was in jail for stealing a laptop computer and collecting money on false overtime claims. The sudden closure surprised the gym’s members--many of whom had time remaining on prepaid memberships.

Larry Frederick, owner of the ProFitness Center, said those members have welcomed him to the community enthusiastically. Of the about 200 members who joined his fitness center during the first two weeks of operation, all but about 40 were members of the Gold’s operation.

“The members are coming back very quickly, to my surprise,” said Frederick, who is offering discounted prices to those customers. “This gym has a lot of potential if it’s put under the right type of management.”

Frederick’s background is in health and fitness. He attended the Ventura College respiratory therapy program in the mid-1980s and for the past three years has overseen more than a dozen rehabilitation facilities as an area manager for Antelope Valley Hospital.

He said the transition from the medical field to the health and fitness industry was an easy one.

“My wife and myself are both heavily involved with rehabilitation--she’s a physical therapist and I was originally a respiratory therapist,” Frederick said. “We’ve been around fitness for 15 years.”

Frederick said the location of the ProFitness Center offers a solid customer base.

“There are less gyms [in Ventura] per population than I’ve seen in many, many other areas,” he said. “There are a lot of family-oriented people here, especially where we are at. And we are right across the street from the police station--firemen and police like to stay in shape as best they can.”

Bruce Gordon of the Gordon Family Trust, owner of the fitness center property, said turning the facility into another Gold’s Gym was a possibility before Frederick expressed interest in late July.

“A couple of people who wanted to open it up as Gold’s quickly ran to Gold’s and said, ‘We want the rights,’ which they got,” he said. “But they were moving too slowly.”

Gordon was pleased to see Frederick show up.

“Since it was a gym, what I really wanted to do was lease it as a gym--I had already made the improvements,” he said. “Although if that hadn’t happened, I would have converted it back to an industrial space.”

A portion of the property formerly was occupied by the Raytheon Co.