It seems that with every passing week and month there are signs that Merle Gregg and his Seattle Executive Fitness gyms are in deep financial trouble. In an apparently desperate attempt to save monthly rental expenses, Merle Gregg is reducing the size of the third floor workout area at the Olive Way Seattle Executive Fitness location. There are also rumors that the current ground floor entrance area is going to become a separate retail business of some sort, forcing members to enter the gym through the medical/dental building main entrance, which would also eliminate the gym's separate 511 Olive Way street level presence.
Below is a photo of what was once the stretching and calisthenics area on the third floor of the Olive Way Seattle Executive Fitness gym. Currently that section of the gym's workout area, possibly as much as a thousand square feet, has been partitioned off and covered with drywall in preparation for painting. The portion of the gym that is currently the upper floor lounge and rock climbing wall, on the other side of the construction area is apparently going to be become a publicly accessible area that will no longer be part of the gym's workout facilities. That space is expected to house the florist shop that is currently a street precense florist shop. How the florist shop will ever survive without sidewalk visibility is a mystery, but instead of having a gym with a lounge and rock climb wall, the area of the gym that was once the rock climbing wall will soon be open to the public with a florist, a cafe, and without direct access to the rock climbing area for gym members.
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| Seattle Executive Fitness reducing size of workout area. |
A large portion of the circuit training equipment has been crammed into the remaining half of what was once the stretching and calisthenics area. Meanwhile, the personal trainers have been left to work with clients alongside people stretching, in a reduced size area where both the stretching and calisthenics activities will occur and where the personal trainers will have to work with their clients. The photograph below shows part of the new reduced size stretching area, across from the stairwell and the personal trainers' scheduling station on the third floor of the gym, the gym's primary workout spaces.
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| The reduced size stretching and calisthenics area at Seattle Executive Fitness on Olive Way |
The photograph below shows the jumbled mess of crammed in, worn out, outdated second tier, mostly Sybex brand, selectorized circuit training equipment that now fills what was once the stretching, toning, calisthenics area of the gym. It seems like it should be obvious to existing members, and to any prospective customer taking a tour of the gym, that anyone who would cram circuit training equipment into a room in such a haphazard way dozen have one ounce of concern for providing gym memberships with a quality workout experience. There just isn't anything about the mess pictured below that any reasonable person would characterize as "Executive" by any stretch of a normal person's imagination.
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| Aging Cybex and LifeFitness brand selectorized circuit training machines crammed into previous stretching area. |
If the owner of Seattle Executive Fitness, Merle Gregg, would have spent more time focusing on making and keeping his gym a quality, friendly, well equpped, well maintained, place to workout, he would probably more customers, more long term dependable revenue, and no desperate need to find ways to to scrimp on monthly overhead just to survive. With some attention paid to maintaining equipment, doing things like providing an adequate number of cardio theater television channels, honest billing with customers, instead of getting of having rightfully disgruntled customers who describe all disastrous state of affairs at his gyms on web review sites like yelp.com, he would probably have customers ready and will to tell their friends his gyms are a great place to workout. Instead Merle Gregg has been lying in comments on yelp.com that somehow the drastic reduction in the size of the Olive Way gym is somehow an expansion. Working on building and maintaining a good place to workout doesn't seem to be what is on Merle Gregg's mind at all. Merle Gregg's unequivocally desperate changes at Seattle Executive Fitness, and his lack of action and attention to maintaining a quality gym, imply that he has everything on his mind except finding ways to make his gyms excellent workout facilities that keep members happy. The fact is that Seattle Executive Fitness members are very unhappy about the obvious signs of deterioration they see as they workout at the Olive Way gym.
