Crunch Fitness Opening 20K-SF Gym in Inwood

Crunch Fitness is coming to Inwood, Commercial Observer has learned.

The “no judgments” gym chain signed a 20-year lease for 20,000 square feet on the lower level of The Jay Group’s 401 West 207th Street, according to landlord broker KSR.

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Asking rent was $45 per square foot for the space in the basement of the nearly complete 270-unit residential development, located three blocks from the northernmost stop on the A train.

The gym will be convenient for tenants soon to be living directly on top of it, but will also cater to newcomers in the surrounding blocks.

That’s because the neighborhood at the northernmost tip of Manhattan is about to welcome a wave of new residents. About a dozen residential developments are nearing the finish line north of Thayer Street — a product of the 2018 Inwood rezoning championed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Those projects include 698 units at L+M Development Partners, MSquared and Taconic Partners’ 405 West 206th Street; 611 apartments at Maddd Equities and Joy Construction’s 375 West 207th Street; and 222 units at Arden Group’s 4650 Broadway.

“With [thousands of] apartments being built in the Inwood area, we thought a national gym or big-box gym was needed for the community,” said KSR’s Eli Yadid, who brokered the deal for Jay Group.

Crunch, which is in the middle of a nationwide expansion, jumped on the opportunity to open its first location in the neighborhood.

Jay Group bought the West 207th Street site, a former Speedway gas station, for $25 million in 2022 and got to work redeveloping it into an 18-story rental building, thanks to a $92 million construction loan it secured in 2023 from BHI, as CO previously reported. The project is slated to be finished in 2025, New York YIMBY reported.

Franchise Realty’s Raymond Villafana arranged the deal for Crunch and did not immediately provide a comment.

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.