At This Downtown LA Club, Some Members Never Really Leave

At the Los Angeles Athletic Club, staying for a workout is often just the beginning. Some members now spend as much as 10 hours a day at the downtown private club, moving between laptops, exercise, meals and evening events without stepping outside.

“There’s members who spend more time here than we do,” club director Najeeb Shamsid-Deen said. “There’s members who spend ten hours here.”

Shamsid-Deen said the pattern took hold as hybrid and remote work became permanent for many members after the pandemic. People who once worked from home began looking for somewhere else to spend the day while keeping the flexibility remote work allowed.

“Maybe you don’t want to sit at your dining room table all day,” he said. Members started bringing laptops into sofas and common areas, which eventually led the club to build out dedicated coworking space. According to Shamsid-Deen, more than half of the club’s new members now have hybrid or flexible work schedules.

Work and Social Life, Blurred

For member Caroline Valmont, the club has erased much of the line between the workday and everything around it.

“It coalesces the work and the social part,” she said. Valmont has taken meetings and worked remotely from the club, where a break from her laptop might mean a coffee or a swim before returning to work.

Longtime member Wellington Phillips described a full day built entirely around the building: a morning workout, a few hours of work, a class, the sauna or steam room, lunch, more work, and then staying on for trivia, karaoke or another evening event.

“So you spent your whole day under one roof,” he said.

Member Patrick Rutnam said that layering of different activities reminds him of the city itself. The building, he said, has distinct “energies” stacked on top of each other — athletic spaces, quieter areas that feel more like a library, work spaces and places to socialize.

The Cost of Belonging

Membership runs about $245 a month, with a joining fee just under $1,000, according to Shamsid-Deen. The club counts more than 4,500 members, roughly 3,000 of whom are considered active regular users.

But when members talked about why they keep coming back, they didn’t dwell on the price or the amenities. They talked about familiarity.

“The connection really isn’t the professional side,” Valmont said. “It’s the uniqueness of getting to know somebody and the authenticity of that conversation.”

“All of us want to belong to something,” she said. “And I think we check enough boxes that people find a home here.”

For Rutnam, that’s close to literal.

“It’s my second home,” he said. “Sometimes it feels like my first home. It really fills in the gaps of what’s going on in my life.”