Academy Group opens new health club in Yorkshire

The Academy Leisure Group has opened its latest health and fitness club in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire.

The facility, a former squash club, has undergone a £600,000 refurbishment and remodelling by Harrogate-based Peach Architectural Design over the past year. It now boasts a 1,500sq ft (140sq m) gym equipped with Technogym’s Excite range, a dance studio, two squash courts and a licensed café bar.

The club currently has 300 members and aims to recruit a total of 550 by the end of the year.

Academy Leisure also operates The Academy and Beckwith Health Club, both in Harrogate. The Academy opened in November 1994 and won the Fitness Industry Association’s (FIA) Flame award for single-site club of the year in 1999 and 2000.

“The Knaresborough site is a typical Academy club in that everything about it – from the gym kit, the changing rooms and the café bar, to the environment, the surroundings, the customer service and staff – is very high quality,” said Philippa Shackleton, managing director.

“However, it is a smaller club than The Academy and has been designed to cater for a specific target market; local residents who want a first class fitness facility on the doorstep or prefer to be a member of a smaller, more intimate club.”

She added that although the company has no current plans for further expansion, it will always consider new sites and opportunities as they arise.