Prato, 24 March 2022 – The gym Klab Proxima B inside the Esselunga shopping center in via Fiorentina it will close on April 1st. The announcement was made by the same structure to its members through a long email, in which the reasons for the termination of the only gym in the city of the Florentine group were communicated.
There were two causes that led to the decision to suspend the activity: the drop in the number of active members and the boom in utilities. The first blow to the structure was given by Covid: if before the pandemic there were 2800 active members, at the post lockdown reopening there were 900, now back to 1600, to which 500 people registered for free swimming and courses were added in the 25-meter pool.
The coup de grace, however, came from the energy price increases: as can be read in the bills attached in emails to the shareholders, Klab in December 2019 paid 24,800 euros for electricity, in December 2021 the figure rose to 74.978 euro. A drain on a structure that also had to pay a significant rent to stay inside the Esselunga shopping center.
“The entire environment of Klab in Prato consumes a large amount of energy”, reads the communication sent to the shareholders.
“It is used for swimming pools and spas, saunas and turkish baths, moreover the building’s above-ground conformation and the large volumes have led the energy impact to be always relatively critical compared, for example, to the Klab of Marignolle which is a much more efficient energy box “.
The company explains that “in a situation already very compromised due to Covid, which we had however decided to finance by agreeing to pay further losses, with the arrival of the war in Ukraine, the cost of energy has increased again by about 50%, materializing on the company’s accounts in an increase of 50,000 euros per month, destined to grow further. With great regret, therefore, from 1 April we are forced to close the structure, because we expect even higher and unsustainable bills for our company, neither in the coming months nor in the long term “.
At Klab in Prato they work approx about twenty people between reception, gym and swimming pool, to which personal trainers must be added. Furthermore, there is the problem of the fact that the members will find themselves without a gym within a week. “All the amounts for the subscriptions not used from April 1st to the expiry of the agreement and the credits still not consumed will be returned by us to the members”, specifies the company.
“You can write to the email [email protected] by sending the refund form and attaching the IBAN, or by delivering the request directly to the reception by March 31st. The credit will take place within the next month of April. The alternative to reimbursement is to use the services of the Klab Conti or Marignolle in Florence “. We recall that Klab had opened in Prato at the end of 2017, offering a level structure with two swimming pools, spa, weight room and ancillary services, obtaining important numbers of registrations.” With regret now – the company conclude – we are nullifying the enormous investments made in Prato “.
Stefano De Biase