A landlord battle is weighing on fitness entrepreneur David Barton’s attempt at a comeback.
Barton, who after a career break is operating Gym U NYC at the former McBurney YMCA building at 215 W. 23rd St. in Chelsea, is facing claims he owes building owner Mitchell Marks $1.4 million, according to a lawsuit filed by Marks Wednesday in Manhattan state Supreme Court.
But Barton, who opened his nearly 28,000-square-foot, three-floor berth at the prewar condo near Seventh Avenue in late 2022, seems unlikely to buckle. In fact, he has intentionally withheld rent payments to protest Marks’ apparent failure to deliver certain promised amenities, according to Gym U’s acting general manager, Leila Timergaleeva, who did not elaborate.
“The landlord owes the gym more than the gym owes the landlord,” Timergaleeva told Crain’s. “This has been ongoing for some time now.”
Barton’s 10-year lease requires him to pay a monthly base rent of $64,000 plus about $9,000 in condo common charges and a percentage of sales, an amount that’s totaled about $21,000 in recent months, according to court filings. Gym U reportedly charges members $180 a month after a $300 initiation fee.
Yet Marks says he’s fulfilled his end of the bargain. “[Barton] took the space as is, and ‘as is’ is a pretty clear term,” he said. “But I believe this will be resolved shortly. Tenants all the time see how far they can push landlords.”
Barton’s arrival three years ago at the former YMCA, the site immortalized in a Village People song of the same name, was a homecoming of sorts. His original chain, which incorporated house music and dim lights to turn workout spaces into veritable nightclubs that became magnets for celebrities, had an outpost at the Chelsea address from 2004 to 2013.
But the location shuttered in the wake of Barton’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after his six-location national company faced $66 million in debt. As part of a reorganization, Barton unloaded what was left of his eponymous chain to regional gym conglomerate Town Sports International.
Barton rebounded a bit in 2016 with the opening of the fitness center TMPL on West 49th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. But a year later Town Sports, which owned New York Sports Clubs, acquired that property as well.
Soon after the pandemic hit in 2020, Town Sports filed for bankruptcy protection itself and later had to pay a fine to state Attorney General Letitia James for continuing to bill members after officials ordered gyms to shut down to stop the spread of Covid. Investment firm Peak Credit led the team that snapped up what gyms remained.
Marks initially sought to sell the West 23rd Street retail space, the only commercial unit at the site, to Escape the Room NYC, a business that stages interactive role-playing games. But in 2022 the deal collapsed over how much space was to be included in the sale, and Marks and the would-be buyer ended up facing off in court.
The YMCA opened at the address with the building’s completion in 1904, and its facilities and rooms were a neighborhood mainstay for generations. Charles Merrill and Edmund Lynch, co-founders of Wall Street’s Merrill Lynch, reportedly met while swimming in a now-vanished pool.
The Village People later celebrated the low-cost single-room-occupancy-type units on the building’s upper floors: “Young man/there’s a place you can go/Young man/when you’re short on your dough,” the band sang in its 1978 tune.
In 2005 Marks’ First New York Realty completed No. 215’s redevelopment as a condo, a 12-apartment project projected to earn the developer $49 million, according to the site’s offering plan, though that haul factored in the sale of the retail space.
