Gold’s Gym has opened a temporary location at Fifth Street and Long Beach Boulevard to serve its Downtown customers as its location on Pine Avenue was forced to shutter earlier than expected, and its upcoming Pike Outlets site is under construction.

Gold’s Gym SoCal Group announced earlier this year that after 35 years, the location at Fourth Street and Pine Avenue would be closing, with the company opening a larger, more upscale location up the street at the Pike. The Pine location was to remain open until the new one was ready in the summer of 2023, but the firm had to move out earlier than expected.

An undisclosed tenant approached the Pine Avenue landlord, offering to pay a higher rent for the 35,000-square-foot space, according to Cyndi Colonna, director of events and community outreach for the SoCal Group. Rather than trying to match the rent offer, the company penned a deal with the owners of the Mosaic retail center (formerly City Place) for a short-term lease at the old Chuck E. Cheese location, which shuttered early in the pandemic.

Downtown was without a Gold’s location for about two weeks during the transition, Colonna said, noting that members got the month of December for free. The temporary location has all new equipment but lacks a proper locker room and other such amenities, she said.

A woman walks past Gold’s Gym’s temporary location at Fifth Street and The Promenade North in Long Beach on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

“It’s a decent space,” Colonna said. “It would be perfectly fine for a small mom-and-pop team, but that’s not our intention.”

Colonna said the intention was also to shut down the outdated Pine location, ever since the company acquired it from a franchise owner in 2018. Working out the deal at the Pike took longer than expected, she said.

The new 30,000-square-foot gym will be located adjacent to the Nike Factory Store—directly across Bay street from the Hyatt Centric hotel and Shoreline Drive from the Aquarium of the Pacific parking structure. The space has been vacant for years, according to Downtown Long Beach Alliance CEO Austin Metoyer, who said he could not recall the space ever having a tenant.

The company is already doing early membership signups for the new gym at a reduced rate, Colonna said. Once the new space opens next year, prices will increase to reflect the upgrades.

“It’s definitely going to be a completely different experience from what our Long Beach members are used to,” Colonna said. “We’re happy to be bringing something brand new and much, much better to the Long Beach community.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the date in the photo captions.

Gold’s Gym on Pine to close after 35 years, relocate to Pike Outlets

Brandon Richardson is a reporter and photojournalist for the Long Beach Post and Long Beach Business Journal.