Brooklyn’s Bally Total Fitness Gyms Are Now 24 Hour Fitness

Photo by Lisa Willner

Big changes are coming to the borough’s Bally Total Fitness gyms, including the one at 2163 Tilden Avenue, following a corporate buyout.

The California-based 24 Hour Fitness purchased 32 clubs owned by the beleaguered Bally chain in December, including the four remaining clubs in Brooklyn.

Little has changed in staffing at the clubs, and even the old signs are still in place. But new signs have been slapped on gym doors indicating the change, and employees are now greeting callers with “24 Hour Fitness.”

Bally club members will be automatically switched over to 24 Hour Fitness members, and can continue to access the same clubs they previously visited.

An employee at the 1720 Sheepshead Bay Road location added that new equipment is on the way, and the complete makeover is expected to take approximately six months.

It should be good news for club members, whose complaints about the squalid conditions at the local Bally clubs prompted us to put together this list of alternative gym options locally – which turned out to be one of last  year’s most popular posts.

Once the largest owner and operator of fitness centers in the world with 440 facilities, Bally is now down to just five across the entire nation – all in New York. The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice since 2007, and its demise quickened in 2011 when 171 locations were snatched up by L.A. Fitness. After selling off another set to Blast Fitness, and the most recent batch to 24 Hour Fitness, it was left with six locations – and one of those has closed its doors for good. Three of the remaining clubs are in Manhattan, according to the company’s website.

The four Brooklyn gyms include the one on Tilden Avenue and Sheepshead Bay Road, as well as another in Sheepshead Bay at 945 Kings Highway and one in Bensonhurst at 1921 86th Street.

Thanks to the several tipsters who alerted us to this. Because lord knows I’d never be caught in the gym.