The check-in area at the Hotel at Midtown in Chicago feels more like a high-end health club than a resort. Parents saunter in with their kids, the whole family toting tennis rackets. Women hustle by in yoga pants. Staffers stand behind a dramatic granite desk and call out greetings to guests as if they're old friends.
That's because it is a health club. An enormous tony, private, three-level health club called Midtown Athletic Club, with wood and stone accents and natural light streaming in. On the fourth and fifth floor of the same building are 55 tranquil hotel rooms (US$225 to US$250 a night), including the soon-to-open V Suite designed by Venus Williams' design firm, V Starr Interiors. (Art by Serena Williams will soon adorn the tennis lounge.) From the moment they enter, hotel guests are thrust into the workout-bound whirlwind.
"There's a real energy because all of the normal members show up and are in the flow of things," says Steven Schwartz, president and CEO of Midtown Athletic Clubs, which has eight locations but just one hotel. "It's not like a typical hotel, where you're sitting in the lobby and you feel like a transient person. You feel like you belong there."
He's right. The energy is contagious and more than enough to motivate a guest to take full advantage of the sprawling facilities. It's a health nut's playground, with 15 indoor tennis courts; multiple pools; golf simulators; a high-tech studio for cycling; a stunning yoga room and Pilates studio (with more than 200 classes available per week); a boxing ring; indoor and outdoor turf-lined fields; a spa; and a fantastic restaurant, Chromium, where the 48-hour duck fat tater tots are well worth an additional Bodycombat class (or three). Hotel guests have access to all of the members' privileges, without the US$200 per month membership fee.
Midtown Athletic Club is a top-of-the-line health club that also happens to be a resort. While many hotels are putting a greater emphasis on fitness (by putting yoga mats and workout equipment in rooms, offering programs that allow guests to borrow workout clothes and shoes, and guiding staff-led runs), a handful of properties across the country are drawing travellers who check in to work out. Businesses might book a meeting at the Hotel at Midtown and also coordinate a group boxing or cycling class. And residents who live in the surrounding Bucktown and Wicker Park neighbourhoods are booking staycations, expecting to get their sweat on. "Several people are young couples who have had their mother-in-law come and stay with their kid. And they go to the club for a day, work out, have a massage, have dinner and then go home the next day," Schwartz says. "And they live three blocks away."
