Guests of The Hotel at Midtown Athletic Club enjoy full access to the premier fitness club, featuring indoor tennis facilities, cycle classes, aquatics, boxing programs, group fitness opportunities, a yoga studio, and more. Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60647, the 55-room luxury fitness-centric resort is designed for the active traveler. Blue Magnet Interactive brings 11 years of hospitality expertise to the partnership as Midtown Athletic Clubs venture into the hotel business. The hotel, which opened doors in November 2017 following a $80 million dollar transformation of the Midtown Athletic Club Chicago, serves as Midtown Athletic Clubs’ first hotel. Blue Magnet Interactive and Midtown Athletic Clubs will collaborate to grow The Hotel at Midtown’s online presence. Hathaway says guests will sometimes reach out after booking a room and coordinate a one-on-one session with one of the club’s trainers in basketball, squash, swimming or other pursuits.Blue Magnet to provide digital marketing services for Midtown’s first hotel.ĬHICAGO, IL., – Blue Magnet Interactive, a leading hospitality digital marketing agency, announces an expanded partnership with Midtown Athletic Clubs. The club is also home to a spa, restaurant and whiskey-centric bar.īeyond the 70 or so classes offered per week, including circuit training, yoga, boot camp, aerobics, barre, cardio kickboxing and cycling, the LAAC has facilities for squash and racquetball, courts for volleyball and basketball, and an indoor swimming pool that was designed when the club was built. In the 1970s, those rooms were converted to hotel rooms. Back then, club members could stay in the rooms, which resembled dormitories. The club’s history dates back to 1880, when it was founded as the city’s first private club. “Whereas a normal hotel would have the reverse, they’d have maybe one or two floors of amenities and all the rest would be hotel rooms.” “We have a 12-story building and our three top floors are hotel rooms, and then all the other floors are all amenities and athletic facilities,” says Cory Hathaway, assistant general manager for the LAAC. 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. “Several people are young couples who have had their mother-in-law come and stay with their kid. And residents who live in the surrounding Bucktown and Wicker Park neighborhoods are booking staycations, expecting to get their sweat on. Businesses might book a meeting at the Hotel at Midtown and also coordinate a group boxing or cycling class.

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 travelers who check in to work out. Midtown Athletic Club is a top-of-the-line health club that also happens to be a resort. Hotel guests have access to all of the members’ privileges, without the $200 per month membership fee. 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). The energy is contagious and more than enough to motivate a guest to take full advantage of the sprawling facilities. “It’s not like a typical hotel, where you’re sitting in the lobby and you feel like a transient person. “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. (Art by Serena Williams will soon adorn the tennis lounge.) From the moment they enter, hotel guests are thrust into the workout-bound whirlwind. On the fourth and fifth floor of the same building are 55 tranquil hotel rooms ($225 to $250 a night), including the soon-to-open V Suite designed by Venus Williams’ design firm, V Starr Interiors. An enormous tony, private, three-level health club called Midtown Athletic Club, with wood and stone accents and natural light streaming in. Staffers stand behind a dramatic granite desk and call out greetings to guests as if they’re old friends.

Parents saunter in with their kids, the whole family toting tennis rackets. The check-in area at the Hotel at Midtown in Chicago feels more like a high-end health club than a resort.

Steven schwartz midtown athletic club