The spa at the Claremont Resort & Club closed for good on Sunday, ending a 25-year run of facials, massages and eucalyptus steam rooms at the landmark hillside hotel straddling the Berkeley-Oakland border. The 20,000-square-foot spa, which opened in 2001 and grew to include 32 treatment rooms, had its final day of service on August 16, though the resort has not offered a specific reason for the closure.
As reported by KTVU FOX 2, the Claremont Resort and Club said in a statement that the property has evolved and adjusted to meet the changing needs of its clientele, club members, and community. Edward Roe told the station the closure marked the end of one chapter in the Claremont's history, adding that various areas of the property have been reimagined, updated, and enhanced over the decades. Management said it is now evaluating opportunities to reimagine the vacated spa space for both hotel guests and club members.
The spa had long served as a destination for pampering outings, bridal showers, anniversaries, and simple relaxation, offering facials, massages, and other therapies alongside eucalyptus steam rooms, whirlpools, and deluge showers, per the same account. The station's report notes the whirlpool and wet areas had already experienced closures in recent years during construction work at the resort. Wellness and spa-related offerings have existed at the Claremont in various forms over many decades, the outlet notes, making the current closure a break with a much longer tradition rather than an isolated event.
The Club Isn't Going Anywhere
Despite the spa's shutdown, the Claremont says its health club remains a key part of the resort experience. The property remains committed to offering health and fitness options through its existing facilities, which include tennis and pickleball courts, multiple swimming pools, a gym, and fitness studios, along with steam and sauna rooms and whirlpools housed separately from the now-closed spa.
The spa's closure lands amid a string of ownership and branding shifts at the 111-year-old hotel. Ohana Real Estate Investors paid $163.3 million in an all-cash deal for the Claremont property in 2023, according to SFGATE, buying it from FRHI Hotels & Resorts, which itself had acquired the resort for $86 million back in 2014 alongside investor Richard Blum. That 2014 deal brought the property under the Fairmont banner as the Claremont Club & Spa, a name the resort carried for roughly a decade.
A Name Change and New Management
Last year, HEI Hotels & Resorts took over management of the property and updated its name once more, this time to Claremont Resort & Club, dropping the Fairmont branding entirely. As Berkeleyside reported, the rename was meant to eliminate guest confusion with San Francisco's separate Fairmont Hotel. The resort marked its 110th anniversary in July 2025 while also carrying out a second phase of exterior restoration meant to preserve its historic timber structure, according to the Claremont Resort & Club itself.
Though the resort markets itself with a Berkeley mailing address at 41 Tunnel Road, the 279-room main hotel building actually sits entirely within Oakland city limits, while portions of the 22-acre grounds — including the spa and tennis courts — fall inside Berkeley, per SFGATE. That dual-city geography has mattered before: a 2016 proposal to build 45 residential condos on the hotel's parking lot drew fierce public opposition and never moved forward, a reminder that any future redevelopment of the spa's footprint would likely run through Oakland's landmark and zoning oversight given the main building's Oakland City Landmark status.
A Hillside Landmark With a Deep History
The Claremont opened in 1915, designed by architects Charles W. Dickey and Walter D. Reed in a blend of Classical Revival and Tudor Revival styles. Its 160-foot central tower remains one of the tallest wooden structures in the world, built on a 22-acre hillside site using heavy timber. Before the hotel existed, the land held a Victorian mansion built to resemble an English castle, which burned down in 1901 before developers purchased the property in 1904, according to the resort's own history.
The hotel's survival has not always been guaranteed. During the catastrophic October 19, 1991 Oakland Hills firestorm — which destroyed nearly 3,500 homes and killed 25 people across the East Bay hills — firefighters made their final defensive stand at the Claremont, and the building survived only after wind direction suddenly shifted, according to The Oaklandside. Decades earlier, a 19th-century law barring alcohol sales within one mile of UC Berkeley kept the hotel dry for years, until a 1930s Cal student remeasured the distance and found the property fell just outside the boundary.
The resort has also left its mark on pop culture: its outdoor pool served as the backdrop for a memorable scene in the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire, in which Robin Williams's character throws a lime at Pierce Brosnan's character, a moment Hoodline previously detailed among Oakland film spots. For now, that history continues without one of its longest-running amenities, as the Claremont figures out what comes next for the space its spa once filled.
