A new LA Fitness has replaced the shuttered Gold’s Gym on S. Glebe Road.
The Gold’s Gym at 2955 S. Glebe Road, at the Arlington Ridge Shopping Center near Gunston Middle School, closed mid-last month, an employee confirmed to ARLnow. Within a few days, though, it was converted it was into an LA Fitness — including a banner announcing its presence — and reopened.
A number of employees were kept on as well as much of the equipment, providing gym-goers with a similar experience as before.
It’s unclear exactly why this Gold’s Gym was closed and converted into LA Fitness. ARLnow has reached out to both companies but has yet to hear back from either as of publication.
In 2020, Gold’s Gym filed for bankruptcy and was acquired by the European fitness operator RSG Group for $100 million.
The closing of the Gold’s Gym on S. Glebe Road leaves the company with three gyms remaining in Arlington. That includes Rosslyn, Clarendon, and Ballston, the site of a parking lot scuffle late last year that ended with D.C.’s deputy mayor resigning from his post. The Gold’s Gym in Courthouse closed in 2019.
As for LA Fitness, exactly a mile from the new S. Glebe Road location is another LA Fitness gym on S. Clark Street in Crystal City. There was also an LA Fitness in Pentagon City until that one closed in 2015.
Elsewhere, another gym is set to open in Clarendon later this year. Life Time, which dubs itself a “luxurious athletic country club,” is expected to start welcoming gym-goers within the next few months in The Crossing Clarendon development.