For the last two years, 72-year-old Patricia Richard of Lake Forest has ended up at Lake Forest Hospital’s campus at least three times a week. But she has not been ill. Indeed, she has never felt better.
That’s because, when she goes there, she heads for its Health & Fitness Center, an $11 million, 70,000-square-foot complex equipped with a 50-meter swimming pool, 155-yard track, 19 treadmills, 46 stationary bikes and 103 strength and conditioning machines. Opened in February 1994, the not-for-profit corporation is owned by Lake Forest Hospital Foundation.
“The doctor had to beg me to go,” said Richard, whose internist suggested enrolling in water therapy classes there to alleviate arthritis pain. Prior to that, her only other hospital visits had been to see friends and give birth to four children.
“I hate athletics and I hate the water,” she confessed, “but I’ve got to admit going there has enhanced my life. I’ve made nice friends there, the therapists are young and fun, and, because of the exercises, I’m able to walk with less pain.”
Richard is one of about 8,200 Lake County residents using the Lake Forest Hospital facility or The Centre Club, a for-profit corporation situated at and owned by Condell Medical Center in Libertyville.
Both award-winning facilities are considered in the vanguard of 300 hospital-based fitness centers nationwide, according to industry experts.
“This is where the hospital of the future is headed,” said Robert Klein, vice president of St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., and one of 10 hospital staff members who visited Lake Forest to get ideas for a comparable facility.
“Rather than focus on the incidence of illness, hospitals are beginning to concentrate on a continuum of wellness,” Klein said. “Competitive managed-care health insurance plans, capped hospital costs and the emphasis on illness prevention through exercise and diet are the driving forces.”
“Hospitals are looking to differentiate themselves in competitive markets like Chicago,” said John P. Greene, executive director of the Evanston-based Association of Hospital Health And Fitness Centers, a nationwide industry group. “This is a constructive way that presents lots of opportunities for cross-marketing. Every day, self-referred, self-paying individuals walk through the hospital door to use these services.”
Condell’s facility, one of the earliest hospital-owned fitness centers in the United States (1988), is a $7-million, two-level, 70,000-square-foot building. The first floor is dominated by a basketball court, used by 16 in-house teams and for volleyball games.
The court is encircled by three racquetball courts, an aerobics classroom, floor space for exercise equipment, and men’s and women’s locker rooms. Each locker room is equipped with saunas, whirlpools and steam rooms. They lead to a 25-meter pool. The second floor has physical therapy, cardiac rehabilitation and other medical-related offices, a one-tenth of a mile track and more floor space for exercise equipment.
“Our goal is to provide as many different outlets of physical activity as we can,” said Rick Schoenemann, Centre Club’s general manager. There are 85 weekly aerobics classes. More than 60 percent of its 4,000 members use the club at least once weekly.
“The Centre Club had the greatest appeal and absorption of members of any place in the U.S.” said Greene, the industry group executive. “It had 3,000 people before it opened its doors. That’s incredible market appeal.”
Last year the Centre Club received an award as the best financially managed center in the nation from the Evanston trade group, Greene said.
Lake Forest has facilities and equipment comparable to the Centre Club but with more equipment novelties, such as a water flume and stationary slalom ski machine. They are located in an airier setting, a three-story building with skylights and floor-to-ceiling window-walls. It was honored last year as one of 10 outstanding athletic facilities nationwide by a panel of seven sports facility architects selected by Athletic Business, a trade magazine published in Madison, Wis.
“What’s also unusual about the Lake Forest Health & Fitness Center is, for the first time in the U.S., medical space was incorporated into a hospital fitness facility,” Greene said.
While the center was still in the blueprint stage, Lake Forest Health & Fitness Center chief executive officer Peter Kleeberg suggested inviting a practice of six orthopedic surgeons to relocate to the center.
“For years, hospitals offered rehab services hidden away in some basement area,” Kleeberg said. “We decided to replicate what was clearly working for for-profit rehab providers–closely positioning physical therapy near large groups of sports medicine specialists–and go one step further. We combined diagnosis and treatment of sports-related injuries with prevention, wellness and fitness in one facility.”
Surprisingly, no member interviewed at either facility listed weight loss as the primary goal.
For Rich Morton of Gurnee, senior vice president at American National Bank in Libertyville and a Centre Club member since 1989, one attraction was the basketball court, where he plays in a Thursday night league. “When I turned my ankle while playing basketball, I was treated right on the spot,” he said. “Having medical staff on premises is very reassuring.”
Proximity of medical personnel also attracted Aldridge Electric Co. of Libertyville. It has a corporate membership for a dozen senior executives and is considering adding additional managers to the program, said Richard Cardwell, company safety director. “We went with a hospital-based program . . . because there’s a doctor available and people can be medically monitored,” he said.
“My personal objective is to feel and look the best I can for this particular time in my life,” said Lisa Trace, a 42-year-old Chicago investment broker and Lake Forest mother of three. She had gained 80 pounds before the birth of twin daughters 10 years ago, lost the last remaining 25 pounds through a rigid fat-free diet plus a daily six-mile outdoor run and was looking for a maintenance program to use during the winter two years ago. That’s when she joined the Lake Forest facility.
“I didn’t want to live on 700 calories for the rest of my life,” said Trace, who works out daily for 90 minutes, sometimes as early as 5:15 a.m or as late as 8 p.m. “I decided I would either have to continue living like that or add exercise to my life to balance things. I don’t expect to look like I did at 25, but I want to look my best, feel energetic and strong.”
Former Lake Forest Mayor Charles F. Clarke, a 67-year-old Chicago real estate executive, visits the Lake Forest center three times weekly for an hour of exercise. “My objective isn’t necessarily to look like Charles Atlas. I’m there for the conditioning to help with skiing, golf and tennis. Recently my wife, Ellie, and I climbed some mountains in Colorado. We’re doing things in our 60s that we couldn’t do in our 40s because we’re in better shape.”
“Our goal is to change lifestyles,” said Marti Derleth, Lake Forest’s chief operations officer. “Being affiliated with a hospital is important. It allows us to have a heavier concentration of staff to assist people. We’re able to have more intensive and smaller programs that aren’t money makers but help people, such as no-smoking, diet, arthritis and aquatic.”
Exercising, sports and educational programs aren’t the only attractions. There are full-service, sit-down restaurants and child care. Centre Club has two tanning rooms. Lake Forest offers massages. It also has a lending library with health, fitness and cookbooks and three conference rooms, used about five times weekly by outside businesses and organizations. The rent helps defray education program costs, Derleth said. Clarke, the former Lake Forest mayor, took computer classes there in the fall.
Membership fees at these facilities aren’t cheap. Lake Forest’s initiation fee is $475 (for a mandatory stress test, cholesterol analysis, and body fat evaluation). Monthly dues are $82. Centre Club’s initiation fee is $445 (no mandatory testing) and monthly dues of $70.
Trace, the Lake Forest investment broker, pays about 20 percent more than monthly dues at 41 Sports Club in Highland Park, where she previously belonged. “I would pay triple the amount,” she said. “I spend at least two hours every single day there. It’s spacious, enjoyable, and there is always availability of machines.”
“It’s worth it for the level of professionalism and level of cleanliness,” added Clarke of Lake Forest, who belonged to Bally Total Fitness in Vernon Hills before joining the Lake Forest facility.
Currently, membership is closed at Centre Club and the Lake Forest complex. The Centre Club’s waiting list is three weeks. In mid-November, Lake Forest’s closed at 3,750 members, said Derleth, who expects openings in the next month or so when some members move.
The influence of these two facilities and their staffs extends beyond their buildings. Three Centre Club fitness trainers staff the 1,000-square-foot exercise room at Zebra Technologies Corp. in Vernon Hills. Lake Forest aerobics instructors conduct daily classes in a specially equipped exercise room at Trustmark Insurance Co.’s Lake Forest headquarters.
In the near future, Lake County may get another hospital-based fitness facility. Currently pending municipal approval by the City of Buffalo Grove is Highland Park Hospital’s proposed 61,000-square-foot health and fitness center to be located on a five-acre site at Busch Parkway and Milwaukee Avenue. It is scheduled to open in late spring, said Chris Vicik, hospital spokeswoman.
“This is what a hospital should be about,” said Floyd Dihel, a 73-year-old Lake Bluff retiree who attends 5:30 a.m. aerobics classes five times weekly at the Centre Club. “My friends think I’m crazy to get up that early in the morning, but I’ve never been hospitalized and don’t have any aches or pains.”
