SUNNYVALE — Movement, a gym and rock-climbing center that has been expanding, has leased a big retail building that a now-departed supermarket in Mountain View previously occupied.
The gym offers climbing, fitness, yoga and other healthy activities, according to posts on the Movement website.
Movement struck a deal this month to lease a former Sprouts Farmers Market site at 630 San Antonio Road in Mountain View. Meacham Oppenheimer commercial real estate brokers David Taxin and Jeremy Awdisho arranged the lease.
The fitness center will occupy a building that totals 23,900 square feet.
The rental transaction is a reminder that even with a forbidding commercial real estate landscape in the Bay Area, deals can still be viable.
Plus, a high-profile gym is the type of retail operation that can’t be replaced by an online commerce experience or remote work scenario. Customers have to participate in person.
“This gym is not an Internet-based thing, you can’t go on Amazon and climb up a rock wall or work out,” said Taxin, partner with Meacham Oppenheimer, a commercial real estate firm.
Movement gym has picked a location with demographics that appear to offer a sweet spot for this type of merchant.
An estimated 153,800 people live within three miles of this location, a Meacham Oppenheimer brochure states. Within the same radius, the median household income is $184,000. The median age is 38.8 years.
Movement will become one of the two anchors in the shopping center. CVS, a pharmacy retailer, is the other anchor, according to Taxin.
Movement is expected to require about six months for the interior construction work to create its future gym and fitness center, Taxin estimated.
Besides Sunnyvale, Movement’s other Bay Area gyms are in Santa Clara, Belmont and San Francisco.
At one point, an option being considered for the shopping center was its replacement with a big new housing development.
“We were planning to sell this to Prometheus (a major residential developer),” Taxin said. “But with the downturn in real estate, that deal never happened.”
