Luxury health-club chain breaks ground on new Las Vegas location
Luxury health club chain Life Time has broken ground on its newest location in Southern Nevada.
Construction is underway for Life Time’s long-planned club in the southwest Las Vegas Valley, across from Ikea. The building itself has not taken shape yet, but site work has started, and Life Time signs that declare “Arriving Soon” are along the perimeter.
Project plans have called for a three-story, 125,500-square-foot facility with areas for weightlifting, fitness classes, tennis, and indoor and outdoor pools, as well as nutrition coaching, children’s activities, massage, and “injectable services such as Botox and dermal fillers,” Clark County records show.
The club, at the corner of Durango Drive and Sunset Road, is expected to open in the second half of 2026, said Life Time spokeswoman Natalie Bushaw.
Life Time’s Durango location, as it’s being called, has rolled out a membership waitlist.
Past plans
Minnesota-based Life Time, which boasts more than 180 clubs in the U.S. and Canada, operates a location in Summerlin and another in Henderson, where it also built a high-end apartment complex next door called Life Time Living.
If prior plans under former landowners had come through, what’s now Life Time’s property in the southwest valley would look much different today.
Las Vegas and Irish developers teamed up in the mid-2000s to build a multi-tower project there called Sullivan Square. Work crews excavated the site, but ultimately, like numerous other high-rise condo proposals in Las Vegas from that era, Sullivan Square was never built.
Lawsuits were filed over the project, and the developers left behind a vacant property whose excavated portion, according to a former listing broker, was roughly 30 feet deep.
Eventually, Life Time purchased the site in fall 2019 for $14 million. Clark County commissioners approved its project plans in early 2020, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic upended daily life and devastated the economy.
From COVID to growth mode
Along with countless other sectors, the health-club industry faced turmoil during the pandemic, given the government-mandated business closures, capacity restrictions and mask requirements that also sought to help end the public health crisis but couldn’t have been pleasant for people exercising.
The crater across from Ikea was eventually filled with dirt. Then in late 2024, the county Building Department issued a commercial building permit, valued at $29 million, for Life Time’s new project, records show.
In an interview in April, Life Time founder Bahram Akradi attributed the yearslong wait for the project to the company managing its balance sheet “through the ravages of COVID.”
Life Time slowed development and focused on its finances, he said. But the company was in its best shape ever and “basically expediting our growth again,” he added.
Life Time wants to open an average of 10 to 12 new locations annually, according to a securities filing, which showed the company made around $156 million in net income last year, up more than double from 2023.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
