A popular gym looks like it will go when the King Alfred Leisure Centre is finally redeveloped, a senior councillor said tonight (Thursday 19 December).
Labour councillor Alan Robins said that the new King Alfred would have an extensive gym but FitLab, formerly Cheetahs, would not be moving into the building.
He was responding to a public question from former Green councillor Christopher Hawtree who asked about the future of FitLab which currently occupies four floors of the seafront leisure centre in Kingsway.
Mr Hawtree told a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting that there had been a gym at the site for six decades.
He asked how the rebuilt swimming pool and leisure centre “will accommodate all of the great-value, very friendly gym now known as FitLab”.
The gym “occupied four floors with 250 well-spaced items of ‘kit’, many of these more substantial than available elsewhere”, he said.
Mr Hawtree also wanted to know whether the Brighton and Hove Boxing Team Gym would be able to stay at the site.
Mr Hawtree asked whether the council might – rather than rush ahead – wait a little longer for a new authority to be set up as foreshadowed in a government “white paper” on regional devolution published by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner this week.
Councillor Robins said: “I don’t think anyone can accuse us of rushing over the King Alfred site. It’s been over 30 years.
“What we’re aiming to provide is a better, bigger facility. We’re not doing anything detrimental. We’re trying to provide a 21st century state-of-the-art leisure complex – and that’s all we’re doing.”
Outside the meeting, Mr Hawtree said that it was hard to see that a new gym would be bigger than FitLab and the current Freedom Leisure gym combined.
Does the replacement King Alfred really need a gym – there are many alternatives in the area?
There is no gym on the scale of FitLab (formerly Cheetahs), and it is great value. Cllr Robins’s remark about providing “a 21st-century, state-of-the-art ” is a bewildering collection of clichés. As the article says, I suspect that the new sports facilities will have less space and fewer items of equipment than FitLab and the much smaller one run by Freedom Leisure.
As for Ms Nicky’s remarkj, below, it is libellous.
Councillor Robins has nothing sensible to say about the King Alfred and no justification for demolishing it other than council greed to sell the site for development. I wish he’d just admit it rather than pretending we are all stupid.
Must be a disappointment for the gym users that they will not be able to park on the footpaths anymore.
Where will all the drug pushers go now? Expect turmoil on the street corners.
A gym is more than a collection of machines. Its a place for support – personal development – protecting one’s health. Fit Lab is all that and the gym it provides has the best facilities for the l0west rates in the area. Open 16 hours most days – the new plan should ask for its input not dump it in favour of less experienced owners. As a member I agree with Chris Hawtree’s concerns
The King Alfred is not just any old leisure centre but the LARGEST wet and dry leisure centre in Brighton and Hove with thirty eight percent of all city leisure centre users using it according to the Council’s own figures.
To suggest replacing it with some toytown microhub offering a fraction of the facilities is outrageous when all it needs is a decent restoration job. Look at the success of the Saltdean Lido restoration only four miles away. To suggest a restoration would only last ten years is yet more flimflam on the part of the heartily unfit looking Councillor who only seems to be able to trot out flimflam.
No more parking on the footpaths outside the gym?
Must be a disappointment for the gym users that they will not be able to park on the footpaths anymore.
Its a great gym with proper courts for team sports, please don’t get rid of it..