Chelsea Piers offering $180/month Fitness Center memberships at 595 Dean, opening June 1. Fees locked in one year. (DT BK ≈ $220.) What about Field House?

Some Prospect Heights neighbors have gotten invitations to join the Chelsea Piers Fitness Center scheduled to open June 1 at the base of--and mostly below-- the two-tower 595 Dean Street (B12/B13) complex.

A founding membership includes a rate of $180/month, locked in for a year, with no initiation fee, a free personal training session, an unsepecified gift package and six annual guest passes. There's a pre-sales office nearby at 594 Dean Street.

That $180/month, which I suspect won't last more than a year, is less than that of other Chelsea Piers locations, according to the web site Choosing Nutrition. (Chelsea Piers doesn't list fees on its website.) 

Choosing Nutrition states that the monthly fee at the flagship club in Chelsea is $250, while that on 265 Schermerhorn Street, at the base of the building known as 33 Bond in Downtown Brooklyn, is $220. (Or $225, according to this Reddit thread.) 

An All-Access Membership is $285. That also includes access to the club in Stamford, CT, which is $200 a month.

Note: in August 2019, a Chelsea Piers executive told the advisory Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC) that membership rates ranged from $135 to $185 a month, and tenants at the two Dean Street buildings, as with those at 33 Bond, would get a 50% discount in perpetuity.

At this point, there's no initiation fee, a common practice with sports clubs. Chelsea Piers claims a "limited number" of founding memberships at the Prospect Heights club are available.

Fitness Center plus Field House

The Fitness Center promises:

ample space and triple-sized ceilings, modern design, extensive strength and cardio spaces, several group fitness studios, an oversized members lounge, luxurious locker rooms and an outdoor terrace.

Note: there's no mention yet of the associated Field House, said to include a gymnastics training area, two turf fields (including for indoor soccer), and a learn-to-swim pool. 

As stated in 2019, the 105,000 square feet of "recreational space" at 595 Dean would be subdivided into a Fitness Center of about 45,000 square feet and a Field House of about 60,000 square feet. (The Chelsea Piers club in Downtown Brooklyn is 52,000 square feet, according to this job listing.)

According to a 2019 state document, the Field House "would be approximately 25 percent smaller in size than the Hudson River Park facility" operated by Chelsea Piers. The latter includes basketball courts, soccer fields, batting cages, and more. 

A public giveaway

Remember, the 96,000 square feet of below-ground space, plus 9,000 feet at street level, for Chelsea Piers at B12/B13, was dubiously approved by Empire State Development, which oversees/shepherds Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, as a never-before-acknowledged category of "recreational space," replacing below-ground parking. 

That meant TF Cornerstone, developer of the 595 Dean towers, saved by not building parking, while gaining revenue-producing space, with no reciprocal public benefit, as argued by the coalition BrooklynSpeaks.

Meanwhile, as Gib Veconi, a Prospect Heights activist and BrooklynSpeaks leader serving on the AY CDC, noted at a July 2019 AY CDC meeting, "this is a destination recreation center," not the "small local retail" promised for that southeast block of the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park site.

Competition nearby

Potential competition is coming nearly two blocks away at 18 Sixth Avenue (B4, aka Brooklyn Crossing), with a branch of the high-end, Minneapolis-based chain Life Time gym, as reported earlier this month.

The Commercial Observer said Life Time leased 36,470 square feet at Brooklyn Crossing, which flanks the Barclays Center at the northeast corner, for 20 years. The timetable for opening hasn't been announced.

Life Time opened a club in 2021 at Front & York in DUMBO, with membership starting at $259/month. So, while Chelsea Piers sure isn't Blink Fitness, a low-cost chain, it might offer a price advantage compared to Life Time.

Life Time also will operate a gym, plus a co-working space, at the Brooklyn Tower, the borough's first supertall, at 9 DeKalb in Downtown Brooklyn, adjacent to the CityPoint complex.