The Burnishing of a Gold Coast Gym

When Kelli Roiter bought her condominium apartment at 25 Fifth Avenue, there were several things that induced her to seal the deal. She loved the handsome 14-story prewar building, its gorgeous lobby, its prime location on the Gold Coast just north of Washington Square Park – and the basement gym. “Because the building sits on a slope, one wall of the gym has windows, and there’s natural light, which is very unusual,” she says. “It was a big selling point for me.” 

Over the years, however, the gym began to show its age. “While the space had very good bones, it had become dingy, tired, and dated, especially the equipment,” Roiter says. “With exercise machines, like a lot of things, you need to stay on top of technology. It wasn’t surprising to see just one person there at a time. The gym wasn’t getting a lot of use.” 

Roiter, a senior executive at an investment banking firm, decided to get on top of the problem. She ran for the board, was elected, and promptly began lobbying for a serious gym upgrade. Unlike new buildings, 25 Fifth couldn’t offer such amenities as playrooms and pools. But, she argued, the fitness center was, in fact, the condo’s best amenity – if it were modernized into a state-of-the-art facility. “Our residents have become younger – there are more of them in their late 30s and 40s, and they would prefer a gym in their building rather than joining one,” she says. “And a new gym would not only attract new buyers but would also increase property values. We have the space, so why not use it effectively?”

At first, there was some resistance to the renovation, particularly from non-gym users. For their part, board members were concerned about the cost and wanted to avoid imposing assessments. “It was very hard to convince people that this spend would be good for everybody, but eventually we broke through,” says Roiter, who got the go-ahead to price out the project and present it to the board for approval. “The money would have to come out of our reserve fund, which meant that we had a very strict budget.” 

Roiter realized that it would have to be a DIY job. “I did think about hiring a construction firm, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of people that would specialize in this kind of project,” she says. Instead, she enlisted a fellow condo owner, Clayton Orrigo, to be her right-hand man. As a broker at Compass Real Estate, which specializes in luxury properties, he has seen many high-end gyms. 

“I felt that fixing ours would be one way to compete with notable buildings in the area,” Orrigo says. “But since we were working with a small room – it’s about 1,000 square feet – we needed to be more thoughtful about picking and choosing the right equipment. And we needed an efficient floor plan that would make the most of the space we had.” 

The renovation was completed last winter, at a cost of $100,000. It took Roiter and Orrigo six months of planning, but the gym was closed for only a week during the actual revamp. “There was minimum disruption to residents during the work,” says 25 Fifth manager Ellen Kornfeld, vice president at Lovett Realty, who facilitated ordering the equipment and worked with the super and the vendors to assist in prepping the room. “Now the room has all the fancy toys you find in places like Equinox or New York Sports Club. Kelli and Clayton did a very good job.”