Avian Gamers Network

I have a management class where I am writing a business plan. I ended up being assigned to a group who is writing a plan for a high end, fancy, nature themed Gym and Spa.

My group was thinking of staging this business in a few big cities, Chicago being one of them. I told them I knew some guys who lived there, and now I have been assigned to gather Chicago related marketing data.

• I need a list of competing Gyms and/or Spas.
  
• I need prices for the services of the competition.
  
• I need to know how much real-estate costs in Chicago. What is the cost per square foot to buy and what is the cost per square foot to build? We are looking at something like to a four story building, exact area undetermined at this time.

Our hard date for a rough draft is a week from today, so I need this info, or leads where to find this info by then. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

North Shore Athletic Club, Cheetah, Golds, Bally and Crunch are the chain gyms that I can think of right off. Cheetah only has a few local gyms but they are in prime spots and they are fairly new. NSAC and Crunch have been around and have large gyms for yuppies and hipsters.

Not sure about the price to buy but price to rent corporate spaces are from $9-18 SqFoot depending on the location.

Northside is where all the 'hip' people live so gyms are around those areas. Gold Coast, North Loop, Lincoln Square, Wrigelyville, Andersonville, Lakeview are the yuppie hoods.

Most gyms here need to offer Arobics, Yoga and such but few offer pools as that is a lot of space and is often to expensive to offer. Also, Chicago has very strict Firecodes so just getting past inspection and be an expensive task. Try and 'buy' a grandfathered building to bypass a lot of the rules.

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Moge

Thanks, this info helps alot. I will start researching the places you listed.

How's the project going? Need any more Chicagoan help?

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Romsuiag (Brad)
Former and Third President of Avian

We took a break to focus on midterms. The next phase is the financial part of the business plan. I don’t anticipate needing much help with that part… maybe a few prices... but sooner or later the professor will return the first phase for us to make corrections. I may need more regional info when we correct the first phase. It all depends on the professors comments and what areas of our business she was hard on.

I don’t suppose you guys know how much a nice gym in Chicago cost to build. I am thinking around $200 per square foot, but I am not sure… it may be more.

I have a friend in real estate. I'll as him next I see him. I know he sells a lot of property with nice homes on the lot just to have the client rip down the home to build a new one. The lot is far more expensive that the build cost is here.

One thing to remember is that we are a large city with a large minority working class. Latinos and Eastern Europeans and Polish do a lot of the grunt work for low wages. This makes a gut rehad possible as the price to gut the building is far less the a remodel. A remodel you need skilled laborers for a gut rehab you need people that can swing a sledge hammer. Almost every building that is bought is gut rehabbed and not remodeled.

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Moge