COURTING COMMUNITY

Midtown Athletic Club used its roots in tennis programs to build a community model with staying power.

BY SEAN CALLAHAN

Approaching his late 50s, Jose Miranda, once a college tennis player, weighed over 300 lbs., was having heart trouble, and knew he needed to change his life. After seeing a Facebook ad for Midtown Athletic Club in Weston, Florida, he joined the club with the vague idea of picking up a racquet again.

Miranda, now 62, has done far more than that. Almost five years later, he’s shed more than 100 lbs. and is part of a 55+ tennis team at Midtown that competes against other clubs. He lifts weights and takes part in Cardio Tennis at the club. And he’s a regular at the club’s restaurant.

"Immediately, they make you feel like you've been there for years," Miranda says of the Midtown staff.

Miranda’s story is the kind of outcome that would likely warm the heart of the late Alan G. Schwartz, who co-founded Midtown Athletic Club—then named Midtown Tennis Club—in Chicago with his father, Kevie, in 1970. At the time, Alan and his father simply wanted a place to play tennis year-round in Chicago, so they built indoor courts on a parcel of land at the intersection of the city’s Bucktown, Lincoln Park, and Logan Square neighborhoods. But they were building more than courts; they were building a community.

“We love the game of tennis,” Alan said at the time. “We want everyone in the whole world to play tennis.”

Alan, who died in 2022 at the age of 91, maintained a commitment to building community, and this mission has guided the growth of Midtown as a club and business for more than 75 years.

“Alan built the business around belonging,” says Audra McDonald, Midtown’s vice president of marketing. “He really believed that tennis is for everyone, and tennis is a way to belong.”

Alan Schwartz

McDonald

Steven Schwartz

A True Third Place

It’s hard to argue with the results of this philosophy. Under parent company Tennis Corporation of America, Midtown now has eight clubs: the original in Chicago; three in the city’s suburbs (Bannockburn, Palatine, and Willowbrook); and four clubs outside the state: Atlanta; Montreal; Rochester, New York; and Weston, Florida.

The original Midtown site in Chicago is now home to a 575,000-square-foot facility. Tennis is still the beating heart of the club, but other racquet sports, such as paddle ball and pickleball, also pump new blood into the club. Among the club’s other offerings are fitness and wellness classes, free weights, swimming pools, a spa, a farm-to-table restaurant, and even a 55-room hotel, built as part of an ambitious $80 million renovation that was completed in 2017.

It’s like the inversion of a hotel with a fitness center: Midtown is a high-end gym with an equally high-end hotel. This concept was the brainchild of Steven Schwartz, Alan’s son, who graduated from Cornell University’s hotel school.

“Steven was on the front line of the evolution of moving from a strict fitness facility,” says Brian Smith, managing director at multinational investment bank and financial services company Piper Sandler. “He’s never been afraid to push the envelope and innovate.”

Anthony Vennare, founder of Fitt Insider, says that clubs like Midtown are “almost beyond fitness facilities. They're like third spaces, like lifestyle facilities.”

In becoming a third space for its members, Midtown has always considered building community as a guiding principle.

“Every decision we make for every new program we introduce is never meant to be just for individuals,” McDonald says. “It’s meant to be a group activity that you can hopefully find your community through.”

And that, especially after the society-wide isolation of Covid, is what many people are looking for in a fitness center.

"The consumer, especially young consumers, are prioritizing health and wellness,” Vennare says. “Through that prioritization, they're also prioritizing people and offline time and in-person community—going against the narrative of digital only, digital everything."

“Every decision we make for every new program that we introduce is never meant to be just for individuals. It’s meant to be a group activity that you can hopefully find your community through.” • Audra McDonald

Racquet Sports Lead the Way

Tennis provides the template for Midtown’s approach to building community. The sport fosters connections with other people—you can’t play a match by yourself. And playing doubles, of course, exponentially expands the sport’s group dynamic.

The properties of tennis that encourage personal connections apply to paddle and pickleball at Midtown. In all racquet sports, Midtown offers internal competition and the opportunity to participate in external leagues.

William Watkins, a solutions engineer at Omni, initially joined Midtown in Chicago because he needed a pool to train for a triathlon two years ago. He has since joined one of the club’s paddle teams and plays in a winter league.

"The paddle culture, in terms of having a drink afterwards, really getting to know the team, having friendly banter with the opponents, has been really fun,” says Watkins, who is 31. “Getting to know a broader group of people that I normally wouldn’t run into every day has been really beneficial for me."

Midtown even strives to transform cardio training and weightlifting, often solitary pursuits, into group efforts. While Midtown has personal trainers who offer one-on-one instruction, the club encourages its members to train in small pods of three or four. It’s another pathway to building community.

Kary Arnet, 34, joined Midtown’s club in Florida in an effort to get in shape after having her second child. She has since transformed her body and her social life. “I am the type of person who would go (to the gym) at five in the morning, put my headphones on, work out, and leave,” she says.

That changed at Midtown, where Arnet has found a whole new friend group. She also values the availability of daycare at the club. Midtown offers two free hours of daycare a day in its Kidstown facility, which is fostering the next generation of tennis players, fitness lovers, and wellness enthusiasts.

Midtown has also expanded its wellness offerings. The clubs offer yoga classes and spa experiences, and, in Chicago, the farm-to-table restaurant is built around healthy eating.

Midtown is not alone in embracing wellness and expanding the concept of what a health club can be. Other fitness brands are placing themselves at the center of their members’ quest for wellness, fitness, and community. For example, Life Time Fitness is building condos, and Equinox has expanded into hotels.

“Midtown, Lifetime, Equinox have all created these wellness sanctuaries,” Smith says, adding: “If you provide this great space, [members] will happily pay more and more dollars, which only allows more investment into the experience, which creates this little flywheel effect.”

Midtown hasn’t limited its commitment to building community among its members; the massive renovation of the Chicago club was a vote of confidence in the local community. Midtown clubs in Chicago and elsewhere are also a strong source of jobs. The eight clubs employ more than 2,000 full-time workers, not including another 500 seasonal workers. As a perk, employees are encouraged to use the club’s facilities.

Tennis Retains Its Starring Role

In the end, it all comes back to tennis at Midtown. The brand Alan built has played a significant role in the global tennis community. He once qualified for Wimbledon, served as president of the United States Tennis Association board, and was a vice president of the International Tennis Federation. Alan also helped develop the National Tennis Rating Program, which helps tennis players find their competitive community because losing 6-0 is no fun and neither is winning 6-0.

But Alan's—and Midtown’s—contribution to tennis isn’t over yet. Through the Alan G. Schwartz Community Tennis Program, an initiative that will be officially unveiled later this year, Midtown will aim to expand access to tennis across Chicago’s neighborhood parks, in conjunction with the USTA and USTA Midwest. As part of the program, Midtown is committing to training Chicago Park District coaches and funding instruction designed to be low- or no-cost and open to the Chicago community at large.

This program is intended to reflect Midtown’s commitment to community, wellness, and, deep in its DNA, tennis. There’s a good chance the program will create new members for Midtown down the line.

Midtown’s data indicates that tennis players are the facility’s members with the most staying power. They experience the deepest sense of community and form the strongest ties to other club members, according to the club’s research.

“Friends,” McDonald says, “don’t leave.”

Health & Fitness Business is a publication of

Health & Fitness Business (HFB) is the leading health and fitness industry publication. Published monthly by the Health & Fitness Association (HFA) and distributed free to the industry, HFB offers analysis of the opportunities, challenges, issues, and news that impact the industry.

Subscribe | Advertise | Past Issues | FAQs

70 Fargo Street, Boston, MA 02210

1627 Street NW, Suite 1210, Washington DC, 20006