Private club cuts costs by forcing women out of gym
A downtown private members club says the decision to eliminate dedicated lockers and gym space for its female members was a “painful” one, following months of steadily declining membership as a result of the downturn.
Female members of the Bow Valley Club were notified earlier this month that they would have until Sept. 8 to clear out their lockers in preparation for the club’s relinquishing of the second floor, encompassing the women-only areas of the club, to the Oxford Properties Group.
“It’s very painful,” said Bow Valley Club president Steve Cropper. “We love the women (members). They’ve been great members. It’s just gutting us to see it go this route.
“The whole thing is driven by the economy. We’ve got half the number of female members that we had two years ago.”
Cropper says female members will still have access to amenities like massage, squash and the food and beverage facilities, but they’ll have to go outside of the club to access fitness facilities and showers through a new tenant gym being constructed in the building by Oxford Properties. Monthly membership fees will also be reduced.
In the meantime, men-only areas will remain unchanged — and that’s not sitting well with some of the club’s female members who say they feel they’ve been forced out.
“It feels unfair because the male membership have not had to sacrifice anything even though the club’s in financial difficulty,” said one of the longtime female members, who asked to remain anonymous. “I feel that there could have been a better solution.
“I used to love this club. And now, I feel like I’m not welcome, like it’s not my club any more.”
The Bow Valley Club is not the only private Calgary club that’s suffering through the downturn.
Bankers Hall Club has seen roughly a 30 per cent drop in membership, according to the club’s general manager, Rick Lindberg.
“We’ve definitely taken a hit,” he said. “We’re more of a top-end executive club, so it’s a little higher priced and our clientele are the ones that are having the most struggles, the ones getting laid off.”
He says the club has coped well so far by lowering prices and trying to be flexible with members who suddenly find themselves out of work or forced into early retirement.
Melanie Peacock, an associate professor with Mount Royal’s Bissett School of Business, says she’s not surprised that private members clubs are suffering in Calgary since luxuries of this kind are often the first to go when times are tough.
But Peacock added that the onus is on the club to communicate clearly with clientele about diffi- cult changes made during periods of hardship.
“There could be very solid business reasons why this decision was made,” Peacock said.
“There could be so many reasons beyond just that it was the women’s-only area, but that needs to be communicated. And that’s the problem: people need to understand why. Because the optics around it aren’t good.”
The Bow Valley Club points to the drastic drop in female membership. Men’s membership has also fallen but not to the same extent, Cropper says.
He added that the club has every intention of reconfiguring its facility to include female-dedicated areas when the market improves.
Previously, the club had drawn up plans to move its women-only space into a smaller area on the club’s third floor, but those were shelved when the projected costs turned out to be nearly double what was initially anticipated.
“The shrinkage in the membership has caused the problem ... (fewer members) mean less dollars and less dollars meant we couldn’t afford to keep the club open the way it was,” Cropper said.
But some of the club’s female members say they feel they should have been alerted sooner to the difficulties faced by the club and that a more equitable solution might have been put to the entire membership.
“As far as I am concerned BVC is terminating my membership with only a few weeks’ notice,” wrote another female member in an email to Postmedia.
“Professional women deal with subtle and not-so-subtle sexism in our careers every day, so it is especially upsetting to deal with it in our ‘off-work’ time.”