The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco has suddenly developed a split personality.
The JCC’s upper floors remain homey, worn and familiar. But last week the basement, formerly the JCC’s health club, reopened as a modern, technicolor facility filled with elaborate new equipment and sweaty, hard bodies.
The basement’s transformation is the result of an eight-year lease signed last spring by the cash-poor JCC and privately owned Pinnacle Fitness.
“It doesn’t look like the same place. It’s lighter and cleaner,” new Pinnacle member Betsy Mayer said as she pedaled a stationary bike after work. “It was dark and dingy and sort of smelly in the locker room.”
But Mayer, a member of the JCC for four years before a $1.6 million deficit forced the closure of its health club and most activities in spring 1995, has mixed feelings about the alteration.
“I knew a lot of people here. It was a nice community,” she said. “I sort of liked the dingy old `community’ kind of place. This is more the yuppie experience.”
Both JCC and Pinnacle hope to benefit from the experimental combination of nonprofit and for-profit.
Pinnacle Fitness at the JCC has already attracted more members than expected. It opened at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday of last week — about six weeks after originally planned — with 2,200 members.
Pre-opening membership sales were among the top three for comparably sized clubs in the history of the fitness movement, club general manager Denise Van Alstine boasted.
“Our wish list was to open with 1,200,” she said.
Campbell Enterprises, which owns five Pinnacle or Blackhawk health clubs in San Francisco and Danville, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovations. The interior was gutted and rebuilt as a spacious fitness room, a free-weights room and an aerobics studio.
On its second day, the health club still smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. The musical strains of Meatloaf and R.E.M. poured from speakers as a youngish afternoon crowd clad in T-shirts and shorts perspired on the new machines.
Mirrors covered nearly every available wall. The rest of the space was painted aqua, royal blue and butter yellow.
Rows of treadmills, stationary bikes and Stairmasters faced a wall adorned with six television sets, which clubgoers can hear by using their headphones.
Even with the delayed opening, the renovations weren’t quite finished last week. The refurbished pool and whirlpool were set to open today. A fitness testing center, children’s locker rooms and children’s gyms will open in the future.
“People can expect changes for the next month or two,” Van Alstine said.
The pool will be used for lap swimming, lessons and water polo; non-Pinnacle members can use the pool for a fee.
The first-floor gymnasium, which will also be used for the JCC’s children’s programs, will offer basketball and volleyball to Pinnacle members.
The Pinnacle deal is expected to reap $150,000 to $175,000 for the JCC in this fiscal year. That figure includes monthly rent and a percentage of membership sales.
The JCC, which is still running a $400,000 deficit, needs the income. But the JCC’s executive director, Zev Hymowitz, said the foot traffic is also vital for the center’s recuperation.
“It’s bringing people into the building who will at least have to go past the programs we’re offering,” he said. “We’ve needed that kind of shot in the arm.”
But questions remain regarding how the deal will affect the JCC.
One of these is whether Pinnacle members, who can become JCC members at no extra cost, will just work out and leave — or whether they’ll take advantage of the JCC’s classes and programs.
Anticipating extra interest, the JCC has published its first full catalogue of activities in almost two years.
Another question concerns how many Jews have joined Pinnacle, or will join — because this figure will ultimately affect the use and character of the JCC. Although the JCC’s former health club welcomed non-Jews, members generally presumed that the club would be predominantly Jewish.
Absent from Pinnacle are the Jewish Russian emigres who used the JCC’s former health club at either at no cost or a minimal rate. Those emigres probably cannot afford Pinnacle’s basic membership package, which is $59 per month with a $250 initiation fee.
Approximately 300 to 500 of Pinnacle’s new members are known to be former JCC fitness club members, Van Alstine said. The number of Jews among them is unknown because Pinnacle isn’t tracking the religious affiliation of its members, she said.
But Hymowitz said that when Pinnacle members fill out JCC applications, they will be asked about their religious affiliation.
At least a few Jewish Pinnacle members are curious about the number of fellow Jews in the club and how this number will affect the building’s feel.
Hugo Wildmann, a former JCC health club member and new Pinnacle member, is among the inquisitive.
“I…believe in the JCC concept,” said Wildmann during a break from his workout. “But how much is going to be a JCC club and how much is a private club in a JCC building?”
Wildmann himself had quit the JCC health club before it closed. “Part of it was because the club was getting rundown,” he said. But now that he’s back in the building, Wildmann also expects to check out the Jewish activities.
“I’m curious to see what the JCC has,” he said.
Meanwhile, the center’s long-term future is still up in the air. A strategic planning committee continues trying to determine whether the JCC should renovate the 1930s-era building or replace it.
Regardless of the facility’s long-term future, Hymowitz has repeatedly acknowledged that the JCC would never have had enough money on its own to reopen the health club. And he’s impressed with Pinnacle’s results so far.
“They took something that was vintage — I’ll be kind — 1960 or 1970,” he said. “And they brought it into the 21st century.”