Philly Fitness is muscling into the Girard Avenue shopping center in early May, taking over the long-vacant anchor space that once housed Bottom Dollar. The local gym chain plans to fill roughly 23,000 square feet, turning a dark big-box corner of the center into its fourth Philadelphia location as part of a broader push to bring the property back to life.
According to PHILADELPHIA.Today, the Girard Avenue club is set to pack in strength and cardio equipment, a 3,000-square-foot turf zone, red-light therapy, tanning beds, hydromassage stations and cryotherapy lounge seating. PHILADELPHIA.Today notes that the Philadelphia Business Journal first reported the deal. The amenity-heavy setup fits into a larger landlord strategy of attracting experience-focused wellness tenants to neighborhood retail centers.
Big space finally lands a tenant
Abrams Realty & Development bought the roughly 42,000-square-foot center late last year and has begun repositioning the site, according to Philly Retail Space. The north side of the property, an 18,000-square-foot former Bottom Dollar, has been sitting empty since 2015. Current neighbors include AutoZone, The Laundry Café and 9th & Girard Pharmacy, but the shuttered anchor has long given the strip a half-full feel.
Bringing in a gym to fill the anchor converts that long-standing vacancy into a steady, everyday traffic generator for the rest of the center. Instead of a dark box at the end of the parking lot, Abrams is betting those square feet will now be lit up from early-morning workouts through post-work sweat sessions.
What the lease means for the corridor
Repurposing a grocery-sized footprint as a fitness and recovery hub will not replace the lost supermarket services, but it should send a reliable flow of people through the center at lunchtime and into the evening. That daily churn is the kind of foot traffic smaller shops and service businesses often struggle to get on their own.
Abrams has been using a similar formula across the region, with the firm managing roughly 3 million square feet in about 20 shopping centers and taking on larger redevelopment plays such as Exton Square Mall, according to ICSC. Dropping a destination gym into the Girard Avenue lineup fits that pattern of leaning on experiential tenants to revive older retail properties.
Pricing and access
Local reporting notes Philly Fitness typically positions itself as an affordable option, with memberships reportedly starting at about $10 per month, which could widen access for residents in the surrounding neighborhoods, according to Philly Retail Space. If those price points hold at Girard Avenue, the club is likely to pull in regular, repeat users and provide a dependable stream of customers for the center’s other tenants.
The gym is scheduled to open in early May and will mark the first major activation at the center since Abrams acquired the property. In the months after the doors open, neighbors and nearby merchants will be watching closely to see whether that wave of new members translates into extra business up and down the corridor.
