Old-school gym pumped up for a threat
Loprinzi's loyalists hope a land-use appeal to the city will protect the funky Southeast Portland gym from a mismatch with a 33,000-square-foot Gold's
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
KIMBERLY A.C. WILSON
The Oregonian
Across the cracked, green concrete floors, past the jumbo bottle of antacid on the front counter and the signed publicity shots of Jesse Ventura and Jack La Lanne, beyond the globe dumbbells and the 10-gallon bucket of hand chalk, through the door of the second-floor ladies' changing room, there stands a vibrating belt machine, plugged in and ready to shake your fat away.
A pewter-colored monument to dubious midcentury health claims once ubiquitous in fitness clubs, the machine has been a fixture at Loprinzi's Gym for decades. Most of the equipment and many of the members have been there longer still. Not much has changed since founder Sam Loprinzi -- a Mr. Universe runner-up dubbed "The Most Muscular Man in America" -- opened its doors in 1948.
While other fitness clubs offer light boxes to battle depression, glycemic peels and child care by the hour, Loprinzi's, just off Portland's Southeast Division Street and 41st Avenue, offers the same thing it did when it was one of the West Coast's pre-eminent weightlifting clubs, back when gyms were sweaty man caves of curses, grunts and free weights: an owner who greets you by name, membership without a contract, Patsy Cline on the radio and the distilled funk of exertion, not wholly unpleasant. You can show up in jeans, sweep the floors in exchange for the $8 fee and answer the phone when the owner's gone to breakfast.
Think "Cheers" with very defined deltoids.
Ten blocks away, in an empty 33,000-square-foot building that recently housed a Wild Oats market, Gold's Gym wants to settle in. If the city adjustment committee gives the green light, Loprinzi's owner Bob Hill thinks his fate is sealed.
But more than fear of competition fuels Hill's opposition to a franchise of the world's largest health club chain. In a city that treasures small, locally owned businesses, Gold's, based in California, has lumbered into a debate here over what constitutes local and small. Just a year ago, community activists wrapped up just such a defining discussion and asked City Hall to turn their ideas into official regulation.
A "beauty contest"
Now some of the same people against big development along Division are ready to welcome Gold's, whose would-be landlord is a local business legend, and whose owner is a Eugene health club veteran with franchises around the state. Neighbors who say they want the option of a modern, full-service gym have given the project their blessing. The city says that turnaround smacks of "beauty contest" planning, development by popularity.
At Loprinzi's, Hill counts about 300 members, an intimate enough group that he knows each personally and doesn't hesitate to leave the gym in members' hands when he strolls to Joe's for the French toast special every morning with his 86-year-old mother.
"It's completely different from any other type of gym," says Hill, 59, a bullet of a man with a cowl of steel fuzz around his head and, no surprise, the body of a younger athlete.
Across the Willamette River in Northwest Portland at the city's only Gold's Gym, Troy Finfrock is waiting for word that he can expand to Southeast.
Finfrock owns Gold's franchises just outside the Pearl District, in Eugene, Keizer, Salem and Springfield, and he plans to bring a full-service health and fitness club to Southeast 30th and Division.
"Very simply, we live in Oregon, all of our stores are locally owned," Finfrock says. "We market to a core group of people trying to improve their health."
Positive mega-business
His gym was granted a variance in February to a year-old regulation limiting commercial ventures, other than grocery stores, that are larger than 10,000 square feet.
Forest Hofer, Hill's longtime lifting partner, appealed. "There's only one legal argument: A big gym doesn't jibe with the ordinance," Hofer says.
Or as a beret-wearing Curtis Salgado, who works out at Loprinzi's, puts it: "It doesn't go with the flow of the neighborhood; it's gonna punch right through, and it isn't hip."
Stan Amy demurs.
"I believe that this is a very good community use of an asset, and I believe it has the support of the vast majority of the neighbors as well as the neighborhood board," says Amy, managing partner of Appropriate Development Group, which owns the grocery building. "My understanding is the regulation was not about keeping out corporately owned businesses. It's about not having negative mega-businesses."
Land-use board members seem confused by the regulation's unclear descriptions of what's allowed on Division. Really, what do "small scale" and "local serving" mean?
The street is sprinkled with clusters of mom-and-pop storefronts, fine vegetarian dining and creative resale shops. Lately, it's also awash in retail vacancies. And as much as anyplace in Portland, Division embodies the city's anarchic indie streak -- remember in 2004, when someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the 20th Avenue Starbucks, heralded as a sign of unwelcome corporatization and gentrification?
But Amy and others point to the arrival of corporate storefronts without messy consequences. When Starbucks opened, it didn't bring the death of neighborhood coffee joints such as Haven and Stumptown Coffee Roasters, and the community health-food store People's Co-op weathered the arrival of New Seasons.
Nevertheless, Hofer says, Wild Oats, which bought out Nature's, the grocery store Amy helped found, didn't survive after New Seasons arrived.
A hulk of a man, Hofer drives twice a week to Loprinzi's from his home in White Salmon, Wash. He got his start in weightlifting at the gym and is trying to regain the world record he briefly held last May for bench pressing 573 pounds. He also ran Loprinzi's for two years in the '90s, until a Gold's Gym franchise launched a member drive from a trailer in Hollywood, stealing a chunk of his core membership, he says, and souring him on the chain.
Dueling 'serious' workouts
But Gold's, the dynasty, began as a Gold's, the gym, as much a magnet for strong men in Venice Beach, Calif., as Loprinzi's was for strong men in Portland. Joe Gold's gym garnered international attention in 1977 when it appeared in Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno's cult phenomenon on bodybuilding, "Pumping Iron." The Web site for Synergy's Gold's Gym on Northwest Overton Street in Portland describes that flagship gym as "the place for the 'serious' workout. No frills, just the best atmosphere with the best equipment to build your body."
That's the kind of gym Sam Loprinzi built.
La Lanne remembers.
"He had every piece of equipment that you can imagine. It was the most modern gym that has ever been," the 92-year-old exercise icon says from his home in Northern California.
La Lanne met Sam and Joe Loprinzi during World War II, when the brothers outfitted a makeshift gym during a training program for sailors at Treasure Island, Calif. After the war, after Sam was runner-up for Mr. America 1946, La Lanne visited Loprinzi's in Portland. Joe Gold visited, too.
Back then, the emphasis was on bodybuilding. Boxers and wrestlers were the mainstay of its members. Ventura, long before he became Minnesota's governor, earned his bodybuilding chops at Loprinzi's. And Walt Nagel, a competitive weightlifter for 52 years, still makes it to the gym four or five times each week. He's 86.
Eventually, La Lanne sold his 100 gyms to Bally Total Fitness. Gold sold his gym to a health club company, which claims to be the world's biggest. Today, Gold's has 610-plus facilities and nearly 3 million members in 41 states and 28 countries. The company boasts that its members climb 1.7 million flights of stairs a day, equal to 11,000 Empire State Buildings.
In Portland, Loprinzi sold his business to a couple who sold it to Hill.
Grab a broom
That was the '90s and the gym's focus had swung to general fitness. Gay, buttoned-down, mangy, matronly, the membership reflected its working-class neighbors.
"This is not a niche-market gym," Hofer says. "We've got old, we've got young, somebody comes in and can't afford a membership, Bob says, 'Well, you can come in and clean in return.' "
Still, there are nearly 40,000 people living within walking distance of Loprinzi's. Fewer than 1 percent belong to Loprinzi's, buying punch cards for 10 visits at $50 or paying up to $350 for a year's worth of workouts.
"There are people that love Loprinzi's and would go nowhere else, and there are people who would want a different choice," says Nancy Chapin, who staffs the local business association.
Finfrock figures at least 3,000 are waiting for another option.
Allen Field, chairman of the Richmond neighbors group, thinks so, too.
"I don't think it's gonna put Loprinzi's out of business," says Field.
His words have added weight since he is a regular at Hill's establishment.
"A gym," he says, "is a place where you go to sweat."
Kimberly Wilson: 503-412-7017; kimberlywilson@ news.oregonian.com
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