January is typically a month of good intentions for health, fitness and wellbeing goals for the 12 months ahead, with many embarking upon new regimes to kickstart the new year.
While public facility usage has resumed following lockdowns, many are continuing to stick with their home exercise equipment and online classes.
Could developments with on-site facilities provide a happy medium between home comforts and the effectiveness of equipped, managed facilities?
Mike Dowland, Operations Director at FirstPort (which manages close to 40 communal gyms and pools across its portfolio), discusses how the property management company approaches the provision of facilities that have become increasingly popular among residents.
Fitness During Lockdown
Many of our residents love to have local opportunities to engage in their favourite physical activity, whether that’s local gyms, swimming pools, or open spaces. As we know, lockdown changed the way most people exercised, as many headed to YouTube for their morning workout, while home exercise equipment was on everyone’s shopping list.
However, as time wore on, our online fitness stars moved onto post-pandemic projects, and those sets of resistance bands were only ever going to cut it for so long. As the nation emerged from lockdown, many returned to gyms and other activities they enjoyed pre-pandemic. For others, the initially forced home workouts introduced them to a different feeling of comfort and safety – as well as a more cost-effective way of keeping fit and healthy. However, for a rising number of residential developments, having on-site facilities can offer an appealing middle ground.
The Rise of Onsite Facilities
With much of the population now commuting less frequently (if at all), regular gym sessions en route to or from the office are now less viable, making direct debit memberships seem all the more difficult to justify. Having equipped, maintained facilities literally on the doorstep, would appear the perfect solution.
On-site facilities offer a cost-effective solution for the residents that have them at their disposal. As with any communal facilities and services, the cost of maintaining these are covered by the service charge.
On-site gyms and pools tend to be more common among larger developments, therefore the cost per resident is minimal – significantly so in comparison to the cost of a commercial membership.
The size of such facilities tends to be to scale compared to a commercial centre, which can have member bases into the thousands, but on-site gyms and pools provide equipped and maintained facilities, almost literally, on the doorstep.
As with any communal amenities, these features also offer a community benefit, as facilities neighbours can enjoy together. In 2021, one resident at a retirement development on the Isle of Wight took this a step further, by using the on-site swimming pool, to benefit a much wider community, marking his 100th birthday by completing a swimming challenge to raise £2,000 for NHS charities.
The Importance of Maintenance
At FirstPort, our development teams manage the maintenance of gyms and pools, including day-to-day cleaning, regular pH tests of pool water, and co-ordinating other regularly-scheduled works carried out by specialist contractors, such as water treatment and equipment repairs, to keep pools and gyms safe and functional.
In-house development staff have also been on hand to ensure facilities were kept hygienic and compliant with COVID protocols, reconfiguring spaces to ensure social distancing where necessary, and enhanced cleaning of equipment and spaces.
Even beyond the implications of pandemic, on-site fitness facilities offer a great alternative to commercial premises and home workouts. By having such amenities available on sites supported by property managers, these facilities can enhance the community feel of a development, where residents can enjoy the convenience of an equipped and maintained health and fitness offering, whilst barely venturing from their front door.
