Building falls where fitness center to rise

Construction is progressing on a 209,000-square-foot Life Time Fitness center on the former site of a newspaper plant on the Platinum Mile in Harrison.

With the first swipe of a demolition claw against a loading dock roof, a vacant Harrison commercial property began its transformation to a family fitness center run by a Minnesota company expanding on the East Coast.

Life Time Fitness Inc., based in suburban Minneapolis, plans to open its two-story, 209,000-square-foot center, Life Time Athletic Harrison, by summer 2014. The company”™s second New York facility will be built at 1 Gannett Drive, a 24-acre site where a 232,000-square-foot office and distribution plant will be razed this fall.

The property opened in 1973 as the headquarters and printing plant of the Journal News, part of the Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper chain. The daily newspaper”™s last employees in the building in September relocated across Interstate 287 to 1133 Westchester Ave. in White Plains.

Life Time Fitness”™s real estate arm in late September closed on the $12 million property purchase from Gannett Satellite Information Network Inc.

The development project, estimated at $40 million, will create 350 construction jobs over a 15-month construction period and 160 permanent jobs on an $8 million payroll, Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino said at a ceremony marking the start of the project.

Astorino said the fitness center property is expected to pump $100 million of private investment into the local economy in the first three years.

Jeff Zwiefel, Life Time Fitness executive vice president and chief of operations, said Life Time “is not a gym” but rather “a healthy way of life company.” The company”™s “best-in-class programs” include training, weight loss and nutrition, running, cycling, swimming, basketball, yoga, Pilates and a tennis complex that includes 10 courts.

Life Time Fitness operates 105 fitness centers in the U.S. and Canada.

The Minnesota company was represented in the deal by NAI Friedland Realty Inc. managing directors Carl Silbergleit and Ellen Benedek in Yonkers and Ken Lundberg, senior vice president of their affiliated New Jersey company, NAI James E. Hanson. Gannett was represented by a CBRE Group team that included CBRE vice chairman Jeffrey R. Dunne, senior vice presidents William V. Cuddy Jr. and Steven P. Bardsley and senior associate Kevin Langtry.