After 35 years, Gold’s Gym on the corner of Pine Avenue and Fourth Street in Downtown Long Beach is slated to close its doors next year, with the company relocating to the Pike Outlets down the street.

Real estate firm JLL recently announced its Senior Vice President Ken Shishido represented the fitness company in a lease agreement for 30,000 square feet at the outlet mall. The space consists of two stories 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 new gym is expected to open in mid-2023.

Gold’s Gym was originally founded almost 57 years ago in Venice Beach by Joe Gold and now has nearly 700 locations, mostly franchises, worldwide. For over three decades, brothers Angel and Willy Banos, CEO and COO of Gold’s Gym SoCal Group, respectively, have pushed the fitness company’s mission throughout the region.

The SoCal Group consists of nearly two dozen locations. The group purchased the Long Beach location from its previous owner in 2018.

A cyclist rides past Gold’s Gym on the corner of Pine Avenue and Fourth Street Tuesday, May 17, 2022. The location is slated to close sometime next year. Photo by Brandon Richardson.

“From the beginning, [we] had plans to either completely gut and renovate the aging gym or move to a new location to satisfy the changing needs of our members,” the company said in an email Thursday. “The Pike is a great location due to the ease of parking, accessibility to other businesses and overall traffic flow.”

The new space has sat vacant for years, marketed for retail or creative office use, according to Austin Metoyer, economic development and policy manager for the Downtown Long Beach Alliance. Both Metoyer and a Gold’s Gym spokesperson said they are not aware of the space ever having a tenant.

At 35,000 square feet, the current space is actually larger than the Pike location. The layout of the new space, however, will make the facility feel more spacious than the Pine Avenue location.

“As we progress into our fourth decade of business,” Angel said in a statement, “my brother and I look forward to growing once again as we bring the best Gold’s Gym experience yet to the residents of Long Beach, seeking to revolutionize the way members will achieve fitness results.”

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