Life Time Opening Alters Landscape Of Peabody's Northshore Mall

PEABODY, MA — A trip to the mall could turn into a whole new lifestyle experience on the North Shore starting Friday.

That's when Life Time Northshore — the massive, 130,000-square facility in the parking lot of the Northshore Mall — opens to the public for the first time, boasting an indoor and outdoor aquatics center, more than 400 pieces of training equipment, two full-size basketball courts, a salon, spa and bistro-style restaurant.

In the works since 2017, the project hit a pause during the coronavirus health crisis but was recently completed in the shadow of the mall where the old Sears Auto Center once stood.

"The North Shore community is a very tight-knit community so when you break ground on a 130,00- square-foot facility people start talking about it," Life Time Northshore General Manager Andrew O'Donnell told Patch on Thursday. "Now that it's opening, we think people are craving to get together with their friends and make some new friends. The buzz has really started to build over the past several months."

The Northshore Mall location will be Life Time's fifth in Massachusetts — joining Burlington, Chestnut Hill, Framingham and Westwood — and is the 10th project of its kind whefe Life Time opens in close proximity to a mall.

"We really saw a vision a few years back where we could help mall owners and operators reinvent that anchor store model," Life Time Senior Vice Presidents of Communications Jason Thunstrom told Patch. "You had your Macy's, Penny's and Sears moving out of a lot of malls. Rather than try to replace them with another store, our idea was to bring this healthy lifestyle destination to this beautiful mall."

The result in Peabody is certainly eye-catching.

The outdoor pool area alone — which includes a leisure pool, water slides, spa and resort-style seating that resembles something from a high-end resort on the Las Vegas strip — is enough to turn heads up and down Route 114. But Life Time also includes dedicated areas inside for everything from yoga and pilates classes, to an athletic recovery center to dressing rooms that feature whirlpools and saunas.

"We're here to promote great, healthy life habits," O'Donnell said. "Post-pandemic, people are engaging in health and wellness differently. Even within the same household, people have different levels of pursuing a healthy lifestyle.

"Our business model is based on the whole healthy family. We want to meet people where they are on their health and wellness journey."

While Life Time Northshore will offer day passes to those who want to check it out before or after a trip to the mall, Thunstrom said the clientele is mostly made up of monthly members.

"We wanted to break from the model of locking people into these long-term contracts and hope they never come," Thunstrom said of the company whose first facility opened in Minnesota in 1992. "This model works for us because from our view is that it means we need to earn your business with every visit. If we can do that, the results will follow."

O’Donnell said there are about 2,500 "founding members" who have been in the club during its soft opening with membership opening up to the entire North Shore beginning this weekend.

Those interested can stop by and arrange for a guest tour of the facility through Life Time's guest concierge service.

"We feel so strongly about the scope of offerings we have here," Thunstrom said. "The vision is to have a place where from the time you are 3 until 103 and beyond there will be something for you whether it's a place to eat, be pampered in a spa, relax in one of our lounge areas, work with a trainer. We have a space for your kids that is not just a little room, but a whole 'Kids Academy.'

"We want to be the place where individuals, couples and families can come and have their every need met in living a healthy and happy lifestyle."

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)