Developer Donnie Jarreau and several partners are launching a new health club brand, Spec Fit 365. The first location will open in the Drusilla Village Shopping Center, which Jarreau bought in 2014 for $10.5 million and has spent more than $2 million renovating.
The new health club will be located in a 5,500-square foot space in the shopping center that was previously occupied, in part, by American Printing. It will open in early 2016.
Spec Fit 365 will be modeled after national fitness centers like Anytime Fitness and Snap Fitness, which are open 24 hours a day. Unlike those chains, Spec Fit 365 will offer group fitness classes.
Jarreau, who has been in the health club business for more than 30 years and founded Spectrum health clubs in 1992, says the local market is saturated with health clubs, gyms and fitness centers. However, the Drusilla area is underserved.
“We felt this was one of the little areas where there is a need,” he says.
Jarreau does not anticipate expanding the Spec Fit 365 concept in the Baton Rouge area. But he believes there are growth opportunities outside the Capital Region, particularly in retail properties his real estate company owns or manages.
“We’ve got 700,000 square feet of shopping center space from Pensacola, Florida to Lake Charles that we own or manage,” he says. “We think we can place this concept in 3,000- to 5,000-square-foot spaces in some of those properties.”
In recent years, Jarreau has sold five of the six Spectrum fitness centers he originally owned. He still owns the location on Monterrey Boulevard.
Spec Fit 365 is the latest new tenant to ink a deal at the Drusilla Village Shopping Center. New Orleans Original Daiquiris opened in October. Jarreau says he has letters of intent with at least two other new tenants and hopes to have signed leases in early 2016.
—Stephanie Riegel
