This gym wasn’t sexy enough for its dues.
Members of the Hell’s Kitchen health club Vebo are steaming mad at management after the gym suddenly shut its doors and reopened in smaller, less posh facilities seven blocks away, — all after demanding a $50 “enhancement fee” to turn it into the “sexiest gym in Manhattan.”
“The gym went steadily downhill, and then it moved,” said an irate Adam Daniel Weiss, 32. “You don’t just close a gym without telling the members.”
He, an advertising accountant, said that in April he received a letter from new management boasting that the extra fee would go toward crystal chandeliers, tanning beds, cold towels and aromatherapy.
But the only things to change were neon lighting around the club and a DJ on Monday nights, according to Charles Mazalatis, 27, a Manhattan real-estate broker who is eyeing a class-action lawsuit against the club.
On Aug. 6, after six months of minimal upgrades, members found the club’s doors locked and a sign telling them to go to the West End Sports Club, a hike uptown at 75 West End Ave., near 62nd Street. where the displaced clientele could work out.
Some charge that the club unscrupulously pushed patrons to sign year-long contracts of $89 a month knowing it was about to go under.
“They were heavily promoting a special one-year, up-front deal even up to one to two days before closing,” said Mazalatis, 27.
“They have no intention of refunding the year up front payments up to this point. Essentially they sold people one thing up until the day before they shut down and moved to a dump.”
Meanwhile, personal belongings in the old location languish in lockers behind locked doors. And while they can work out at the new club, all exercise classes are cancelled until further notice.
Vebo’s owner, Raymond Connelly, told the Post that the iron-pumpers’ demands for a refund would be determined on a “case-by-case” basis. Connelly claims the sudden shuttering was the fault of ablames a stubborn landlord, Winter Management Corporation, that moved to evict him while still promising to negotiate over the whopping $75,000 monthly rent for the 55th Street location between 9th and 10th Avenues.
Connelly, who says he paid $1.5 million to turn the former Club H into Vebo, isn’t happy about the closing either.
“All my life savings have been just wiped out,” Connelly said. “It’s like a child passed away on me. I want to sit down and cry. I can’t believe what this landlord did to me.”Connelly said his investment in a face lift at the new location would eventually turn it into what he had promised all along: the “sexiest gym in Manhattan.”
He added that he took a six-figure financial hit rolling over Club H members who had already paid dues to the previous owner.
For now, West End Sports Club has agreed to take Vebo’s high-end equipment and provide a place for its jilted patrons to work out.