What it’s like working out at Altea Ottawa — Canada’s largest gym

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“How sweaty do you want to get?” 

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Ottawa business tycoon Jeff York asked me that question as we perused a big screen on the wall listing the array of fitness classes that were due to start within the hour. 

Among the options were yoga, hot yoga, pilates, cycling, boxing, HIIT (high-intensity interval training), and a weight-lifting session called LF3 Strength. 

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“Moderately?” I replied, keenly aware of my lack of athletic ability.

We were in the centre of York’s latest venture, Altea Active, a huge, high-end fitness facility on Carling Avenue that encompasses 129,000 square feet of reimagined, custom-designed retail space, located on a five-acre piece property that used to house a Canadian Tire store.

After a renovation costing more than $30 million, the only indoor feature that remains of the hardware retailer is the escalator ferrying people up from what’s now a grand reception area. That new-tire smell is gone and black-clad staff greet you from the marble facade of a front desk that looks more like a luxury hotel than a gym. 

Whoops.

“Don’t call it a gym” was one of the first things York told me when I called to set up a visit. 

“Seriously. We can never use the word gym ever again,” he added emphatically. “Altea is a premium fitness-wellness club. It’s a big difference.” 

The vision is to offer everything fitness-related under one roof, including, but not limited to, boutique studios, classes with top instructors, pickleball courts, high-end equipment and a swimming pool — plus a slate of features that fall in the category of recovery, such as steam cabins, dry saunas, state-of-the-art massage chairs and cold-therapy devices. 

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Founded by Ottawa native David Wu and business partner Michael Nolan, former executives at rival fitness chain Movati Athletic, the company launched its first location in a purpose-built facility in Winnipeg. It opened in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic started. 

COVID-19 devastated the Canadian fitness industry as shutdowns and health restrictions discouraged people from working out in public spaces. The uncertainty prompted many Canadians to cancel their gym memberships, while others swore off returning to fitness centres ever again. 

It’s estimated at least 25 per cent of Canadian fitness facilities shut their doors for good during the pandemic, said Gabriel Hardy, executive director of the Fitness Industry Council of Canada.

Many turned to home-workout apps like Peloton, sparking a digital fitness trend that, in Hardy’s opinion, led folks right back to the gyms as the pandemic waned. He pointed to a survey in the United States that showed that 70 per cent of people did not feel in shape enough to enter a gym before the pandemic.

“Thanks to all the fitness at home (during the pandemic), a lot of people started to feel more empowered. Now they don’t feel weird at a gym, they feel like they fit in,” Hardy said in an interview. 

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He said another factor luring people back to the gym was a greater awareness of the importance of good general health. “During the pandemic, a lot of people realized they need to take care of their health and their body so they’re seeking more help from professionals. They are just more aware of the importance of physical activity.” 

It appears the once-prophesized death knell to public gym spaces didn’t last long.

Altea expanded to Toronto in 2022 and Vancouver the following year, striking a chord with a newly health-conscious population. Memberships are already sold out in the 43,000-square-foot Vancouver location, the smallest of the four.

The gleaming new location in Ottawa is Canada’s fourth — and largest — Altea. The company has its long-range sights set on establishing locations in Calgary and Edmonton and adding clubs in Toronto and Vancouver. The fifth Altea, the second Toronto location, will occupy a retail space on Bloor Street formerly occupied by Nordstrom’s, York said. It’s expected to open mid-2025.

In Ottawa, the flagship club had a record number of memberships sold before the doors opened, representing a significant chunk of the capacity of 10,000 to 12,000. Thousands of Ottawans signed up in the presale to be “founding” members, including one former journalism pal I ran into during my visit. 

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Shelley Page was coming off a pickleball court and looking forward to hot yoga when we met. 

“This is weird, but I actually joined to save money,” she said, listing the costs of doing aquafit at one facility, Zumba at another and pickleball wherever she can. The six indoor pickleball courts at Altea are a perk for her, considering the shortage of courts in the city for the fastest-growing sport in the world. 

“We wanted to be among the first people to be able to play pickleball here,” she added. “We play everywhere.”

The pickleball courts are already busy, although some of the features required to make them run smoothly are not quite ready. The 25-metre swimming pool, hot tub and children’s pool aren’t finished either, due to construction and supply delays. They are expected to open by March 2025. The child-care area are also behind schedule in opening, and the previously announced Fraser Brothers restaurant failed to materialize when the deal fell through. 

Still, those minor annoyances did little to quell the enthusiasm of members, who oohed and awed at everything, including the variety of equipment, the atmospheric lighting, the luxe fixtures, the spacious hang-out areas with comfortable lounge chairs, the giant theatre screen in the spin studio and the spa-like feel of the change rooms, with sauna and steam room. There’s also a generous women’s-only fitness area. 

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Small groups of people chatted together in the public spaces, illustrating another reason for the growing success of Altea — the opportunity to socialize. 

“Gyms are not just a destination for fitness anymore,” said the fitness council’s Hardy. “People like to spend more time there than just the time they’re training. So what Altea is bringing to the game is really the fact that you can go there, do your yoga classes, go to a sauna for recovery and meet friends in a place that feels like the nicest place in the world.”

Everyone wants a clean and well-designed facility, he added, especially Gen Z and millennial patrons looking for attractive spots to snap a selfie. Stats show the younger generations are often more health-conscious, too, eschewing alcohol and tobacco in favour of strength training and smoothies.

For York, the business of fitness is personal. A decade ago, he was in terrible shape, burned out from a demanding career at the helm of two popular Canadian brands founded in Ottawa. At Giant Tiger, he worked his way up to president and was credited for helping the discount chain survive the Walmart invasion. Then he became chief executive officer of Farm Boy and led the strategy for the grocery retailer’s expansion.

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 “I was running Giant Tiger and Farm Boy with four herniated discs,” recalled the Ottawa-born exec who grew up in an athletic family in Nepean (his brother is former Ottawa Senators defenceman Jason York). “I couldn’t tie my shoes. I couldn’t do anything when I was 50 years old, and I just said I’m not going to live my life like this.”

With pressure from daughter Jenna, a former competitive swimmer with a knack for business, Jeff started working out, finding a new passion in lifting weights, boxing and pickleball. Never one to do anything half-heartedly, he bought into a weight-training fitness company run by Jenna and a partner. They turned it into a boutique lifestyle-fitness studio called LF3 and developed the online end of the business during the pandemic. A partnership with Altea was struck in 2022, adding LF3 weight-lifting classes to the schedule of offerings. 

Jeff, initially an investor in Altea Active, became CEO last June. Jenna, who’s 34, is the Ottawa club’s vice-president of member experience and marketing and the person careful to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt myself taking a class. 

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She explained some of the classes, describing Tempo Cycle as “a dance party on bikes” and assuring me the LF3 instructor would make sure my form was “dialled in.” 

Impressed by the fact that every participant in the LF studio had their own bench and rack full of weights, I chose the LF3 Strong class. Even more impressive was the instructor, Tayler Kelly, a six-foot-tall Ottawa woman known for her killer punch who became the World Boxing Council’s Muay Thai Canadian amateur champion last spring. She’s also a boxing instructor at Altea.

Against a soundtrack of high-energy electro-pop, Kelly shepherded a crew of participants ranging from the beautifully young and fit to those of us trying to ward off the ravages of age. Wisely, I stuck to light weights and managed to complete the required cycles of reps. 

The class was safe and well structured, with a pre-workout warmup and stretching afterwards, while the lifting was balanced by exercises that relaxed the targeted muscles. Kelly delivered instructions with a smile, kept an eye on form, and provided encouragement. Yes, I got extremely sweaty.

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Our next stop was the smoothie bar, where the pre- and post-workout shakes were $9.99 apiece. I opted for the Blue Wave, a concoction that includes yogurt, fruit and the superfood blue spirulina. Salads and sushi were also available. 

Located inside the main entrance, but, before you scan into the club, the smoothie bar and Starbucks are the only areas accessible to non-members. 

Memberships, by the way, are offered at three price points, starting at about $120 monthly for gold, $130 for platinum and close to $200 for diamond. (The diamond tier includes monthly body composition scans and complimentary access to something called the Somadome meditation pods.)

My Altea experience concluded in the Recovery Lounge. Cocooned in a futuristic massage chair that radiated heat and kneaded me from calves to shoulders, I almost drifted off. That is, until I found myself realizing I hadn’t cleaned the copious amount of perspiration off the bench I used.

Not to worry, Jeff said later. Among the club’s 200 or so employees is a full-time team dedicated to cleaning after every class and making sure the place is spotless. 

lsaxberg@postmedia.com

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