Cherry Hill Racquet Club opened its doors to the public as a tennis-only facility back in 1971. With two separate locations, and 21 indoor tennis courts, the needs of the tennis player were fully being met. Like most industries, change is inevitable, and in order to succeed, we had to grow with the changes.
In the early 80s the racquetball craze prompted the addition of 11 racquetball courts. As the aerobics and fitness craze followed, the attraction to general fitness workouts became more popular. The Cherry Hill market for health clubs at the time was sparse and fitness appeared to be a solid market to branch into. In 1993, owner Chuck Epstein added the word “Health” to the racquet club’s name, and joined the fitness industry. No longer a tennis-only facility, Cherry Hill Health & Racquet Club (CHHRC) now housed a fitness area, which included an indoor track, three-quarter basketball court, and an un-enclosed aerobics studio. The new tennis and fitness club opened with much success. But, as the years passed, and competition developed in the market, it was becoming evident that something had to change. The preceding expansion became sub par to the competition, membership wasn’t growing, and Epstein had come to a crossroads. The club was in dire need of updating, the market was changing, and Epstein was torn. After considering selling the club, Epstein decided to fully invest in the health club business with diversification of services and a reinvestment of capital. With input from special consultants, he consolidated his operations into one facility by selling the second tennis building and adding two dome structures over existing outdoor courts to accommodate his tennis members.
Within one year, three large health clubs were built within a three mile radius of our club, which further limited the success of the fitness component of CHHRC. But what was coming into the market were “big box” franchise clubs that, for the most part, were designed to target adult exercisers. Epstein knew that to differentiate itself from the rest of the competition, CHHRC had to create its own niche within the market. And so… our family focus evolved.
The initial plan originated as a $175,000 expansion project, including cosmetic work, general upgrades and basic improvements. Epstein quickly realized that to successfully complete this project, additional capital needed to be invested and the scale of the project expanded dramatically. The financial scope snowballed into a $1,000,000 renovation. The new club would house a full-size wood basketball/volleyball/sport court, a 2500 square foot group exercise studio, 600 square foot Pilates studio, 1600 square foot mind/body studio, 1200 square foot women’s only fitness center, 800 square foot physical therapy space to be leased out, and party rooms. Our once tennisonly facility had expanded into a state-ofthe- art family health club, right before our very eyes!
Our sport court has definitely played a huge role in the success of our renovation. We’ve established basketball leagues, volleyball leagues, and youth soccer programs. The sport court is also CHHRC party headquarters. Although our specialty is youth birthday parties, the space allows us to market ourselves for larger parties, too.
With creating a mind/body studio, as well as a group exercise studio, we have put ourselves in a position to offer our members more classes, with more time slots. We’ve customized our women’s only fitness center, not only to be more competitive with 30-minute “bare bones” franchises, but to be head-over-heels better. This area not only conducts 30- minute Circuit Express classes, but has several cardio machines, easy-to-use weight machines, and free weights, all enclosed in a quiet atmosphere, secluded from the rest of the club.
At CHHRC we feel strongly about educating our children on the benefits and rewards of a physically active lifestyle. With this in mind, we have created fun and imaginative programs for children as young as two, and more competitive, challenging programs for teens up to 18! Some of our more unique programs such as Girls Club bring together health and fitness with the creative and performing arts. Our Teens in Training program is an overall balanced program emphasizing health and wellness through fun but challenging fitness and sports activities. These programs are targeted to teens that may not be active in sports or afterschool programs, but are interested in becoming more active young adults. We also offer more traditional programs such as gymnastics, youth soccer, Jr. tennis programs, kids fitness and more.
Now that the renovation itself is complete, we wonder how much our club improvements will impact our success. But either way, we walk away from this project with a new sense of pride in our club, a rapidly growing membership, and the satisfaction of knowing that we offer our members and their entire families, an exclusive selection of tennis, racquetball and fitness choices. We’re confident our new facility will help our members meet their tennis and fitness goals, but more importantly, will provide wonderful memories of time well spent together with their families. This in itself is reward enough.
Lisa Alberta is the Marketing Director of Cherry Hill Health & Racquet Club. She can be contacted at 856.429.1388 x 131, or by email at lalberta@chhrc.com, or visit www.chhrc.com.
