THE NEW YORK TIMES / Sunday Styles (April 28, 2002)
FIND HOME, SWEET HOME, AT THE NEW HAUTE GYM

On a spring afternoon, Johnna Cummings was basking next to a gas-fired hearth at Clay, on West 14th Street in Manhattan, and leafing through The Face magazine. That Ms. Cummings, 32, a full-time student, chose a gym as a place to relax, drink espresso, watch CNN on a plasma screen television and answer e-mail messages is hardly surprising. Fitness clubs have morphed into ersatz homes, and their luxury services have become as much a selling point as their styles of yoga.

''Clay is a place where you can work out and chill out,'' said Ms. Cummings, who spent four hours there that day, including the time she devoted to free weights and the treadmill. The former lead singer of a 90's pop group, Boy Krazy, Ms. Cummings has an Upper East Side apartment and a downtown pied-‡-terre, but she prefers Clay. ''It's intensely beautiful and aesthetically relaxing,'' she said.

A lifetime ago, gyms were the kind of spartan caves where Rocky Balboa would sweat it out with a punching bag. In the 1980's they became sleek health clubs populated with endless rows of Nautilus machines. In the 1990's, they added spas and juice bars. And now the newest sybaritic clubs are revved up with services such as dog walking, car washing, Botox injections and full-service restaurants. The add-ons will cost you, of course; most clubs bill extra for supplying the comforts of home away from home.

Think of anything a luxury hotel will do, or a bevy of in-line servants, and a health club somewhere will offer the same. At the Sports Club/LA at Rockefeller Center, you can have your hair blown out ($65), your face treated with blue sea algae ($125), and then enjoy a ''healing Thai chicken soup'' ($8) at Pulse, the on-site Drew Nieporent restaurant.

Megagyms like the Sports Club/LA, a national chain, and Western Athletic Clubs, with branches in California and Washington, pull out all the stops. One locker-room attendant at the Sports Club/LA in Los Angeles remembers being handed a torn Tracey Feith skirt and being asked to mend it. (She did.) One woman stood naked in the locker room of the upscale East Bank Club in Chicago and asked the club's takeout restaurant to cater a dinner party for eight people. That night. (They did.)

The health club industry's research shows that members tend to work more overtime than average, which suggests why clubs offering overscheduled people one-stop shopping would have a strong appeal. At the tony Houstonian club in Houston, members can ask a travel agent to research a cycling trip to the Amalfi Coast while they're clocking miles on a stationary bike. At East Bank last month, Smashbox's spring make-up line was being showcased in the women's locker rooms, while the pro shop was staging a trunk show of vintage jewelry.

At most branches of the Sports Club/LA and Western Athletic clubs, it is now expected that cars will be washed and detailed by a valet while members work out. A cleaner will take care of laundry. And a concierge will snag tickets to a show.

Upping the ante, at Clay in New York, where orchids are deployed as though it were a Calvin Klein flagship store, a nutritionist will go to your home and replenish your pantry with healthy food, and a private chef will instruct you in the art of cooking an organic vindaloo. ''I wanted to create a place where people can be nurtured,'' said Robin Brown, a co-founder of Clay. Ms. Brown even plans to give dinner parties for club members in her TriBeCa loft.

Clay charges an initiation fee of $500 and monthly fees of $140 for basic services; spa, nutritional and concierge services are extra, billed to members' accounts. An executive membership at the Sports Club/LA, the top-of-the-line package, has a $1,575 joining fee and monthly charge of $265. The fee includes personalized laundry service and access to all of the gyms around the country.

Laura Aviva, 31, an events organizer who recently joined Clay, her first club, said, ''I live in a tiny apartment, and the fact that they're trying to create a sense of community appealed to me.''

For years, health clubs have tantalized single people with the prospect that they might lock eyes across the rows of Stairmasters. Now they can pursue an entire courtship on premises. Jan Evans Richardson, 50, an advertising account executive and former actress, met her boyfriend, Danny Mulligan, 57, a real estate agent, by the Houstonian's pool. They followed with drinks at the Gazebo bar (at the club), dinner at the Center Court Cafe (also on premises), and soon enough, a love match was made. Now they play tennis together there and attend luncheon seminars organized by the club (Barbara Bush is the keynote speaker tomorrow). ''Instead of going out on a date Saturday night we might sit by the pool, take a Jacuzzi and look up at the stars,'' Ms. Richardson said.

Hobnobbing is as important as crunching at the Pacific Athletic Club in Redwood City, Calif., too. It offers ski excursions to Lake Tahoe, wine trips to the Napa Valley and whale watching on Half Moon Bay. The club has a shuttle bus to ferry members on outings, and a 175-seat banquet room. Tom Cruise once staged a birthday party on the basketball court of the Sports Club/LA in Los Angeles.

Is there anything the club won't do in the name of indulgence?

''Illegal things,'' said Nanette Pattee Francini, a co-founder of the Sports Club/LA. ''And we don't bathe our members; they need to shower themselves.''

Architecture and design are used as drawing cards, just as they are for the new Prada store or a boutique hotel. Dodd Mitchell, who designed the restaurants Balboa, Sushi Roku and Katana in Los Angeles, gave the Body and Soul gym there bamboo ceilings, calming water fountains and sleek stone showers.

Stylistically, a schism exists between clubs that mine baroque themes (the kind of interiors that might be found on an Aristotle Onassis yacht) and those that evoke a downtown, pared-down aesthetic. In the latter camp is the new Equinox, which has touches like industrial plastic that resembles satin for the reception desk, brushed steel pendant lights and iridescent tiles by the pool. ''We want to create locker rooms that are more beautiful than people's bathrooms at home, juice bars that are prettier than their kitchens, and spa services people even in the upper markets can't have in their apartments,'' said Paul Boardman, Equinox's executive vice president. The New York chain opened a gym in Pasadena, Calif., last year and has more planned, for Chicago and Los Angeles.

Some people are as picky about gym décor as they are about their workout regimes. Alan Orenbuch, 47, a New York architect, switched from what he called ugly gyms to Clay -- based on the renderings alone. ''Have you seen the sink details?'' he asked. ''They really know what they're doing.''

For all their domestic flourishes, you still can't sleep in the clubs. But, guests at Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons hotels in San Francisco, Washington and Boston have access to an adjacent Sports Club/LA. Conceivably, they could nap between hip-hop aerobics classes and an oxygen facial.

The list of added services is potentially as endless as the need to compete with one another. Might health clubs add dating services? Perhaps religious services so members can be married there too?

The symbiosis between spas and gyms, already well-advanced in many cities, would suggest that comprehensive medical services are the next growth area. ''You already have clubs delivering post-surgery rehab, cardiac rehabilitation and minor outpatient plastic surgery,'' said Bill Howland, research director for the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association. Ahead of the trend, the Marsh, an integrated fitness center and medical clinic in Minnetonka, Minn., opened 17 years ago with an on-site cardiologist and acupuncturist. More recently, it has expanded to include pre- and post-operative rehabilitation, as well as consulting cardiologists, physiatrists and neurologists.

''People are tired of specialization,'' said Ruth Stricker, the founder of the Marsh. ''They're looking more for a manager or somebody to listen and put it together.''

Considering all the roles they play, it is perhaps not so astonishing to find that health club memberships are rarely the first thing to be dropped in unsettled economic times. For upwardly mobile types who could not get through a week without Power Pilates, forgoing exercise would be a sign of failure. ''When we hit a recession, their membership isn't the first to go -- it's their house,'' said Ms. Francini of the Sports Club/LA.

-George Epaminondas