Steve On Your Side found when Zone Athletic Club closed their locations, they often transferred memberships to other gyms because of a clause in contracts.

AURORA, Colo. — Members at Zone Athletic Club at Southlands in Aurora got an abrupt message late last month that their gym was closing in two days.

The notice said those members were welcome to continue to work out at a nearby YMCA, but many members didn’t realize their memberships had actually been sold to the YMCA and if they wanted to cancel, they’d have to give at least 30 days notice.

The closure of Zone’s final location is the third such closure in the last year and the third time members have been informed that the gym was exercising a term in the fine print of their membership agreement that allows Zone to transfer their membership to any gym within five miles if the gym shuts its doors.

Chad Hoffman said he’d heard rumors about the closure earlier in January, but got a notice on Jan. 21 that the gym would close by Jan. 23. He said he immediately tried to contact Zone’s payment provider to cancel his membership as he didn’t want to transfer to the YMCA, but was told the 30-day notice provision in his contract was still valid.

“They should have given us proper notice,” Hoffman said. “They should have allowed us to cancel memberships.”

Tiffany McEwan got the same notice about the closure. She said she and her husband had used the gym for years, but her son had just signed up the week before the announcement of the closure. She said the family didn’t want to continue to the YMCA because the hours were different than Zone’s 24-hour access.

“[Zone’s] the gym I signed up for,” she said. “That’s the gym we go to because of their hours. They’re open 24/7 and that’s why we go there.”

She was met with the same response: if she wanted to cancel, she’d have to provide a 30-day notice.

“I get that businesses closed down all the time, but don’t take advantage of the people who kept you in business for all these years,” she said.

Steve On Your Side found on Dec. 18 that a judge issued an order requiring Zone to vacate the Southlands building by Jan. 25 – as the gym’s landlord argued the gym hadn’t paid all of its rent since May of 2022 and the lease was now in default – with Zone owing more than $2.9 million.

“We’ve been working with our landlord there for a long time,” Zone’s COO Brad Banker said in a phone call with on Monday. “But, you know, with a lot of these landlords, you know, they never forgave our rent during COVID. So, you know, we had back rent there, we got it, you know, deferred, but never forgiven.”

Banker said the reason for the late notice is that his company was working to renegotiate lease terms up until the last moment.


Not the first time this has happened

The story of the sudden closure at Zone’s final location at Southlands mirrors how two of its other gyms closed last year.

In March, 9NEWS reported on Zone’s Fort Collins location had been seized by the state government for unpaid taxes and was suddenly shuttered.

In that case, memberships were transferred to a Crunch Fitness, which is a little more than a five mile drive from the Zone location, but is less than 5 miles “as the crow flies,” Banker told the Fort Collins Coloradoan in March.

Anna Wilson said she only found out about that gym’s closure when she saw an Instagram story the day it closed. She said she was never notified her membership had transferred to another gym until she saw a charge on her bank account. She said she disputed the charge – only to be met with threats of being sent to collections from Zone’s payment provider. Those threats subsided after she filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau.

“I was transferred without my consent or without my knowledge, and it was frustrating,” Wilson told 9NEWS this summer. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to go to this gym.’”

She said no one told her about the five mile provision in the gym’s contract when she signed up.

“I would have known that, I would never have signed up with them ever,” she said.

Months later, members of the Zone Athletic Club location in Cherry Creek were notified of the gym’s closure after months of being moved to different locations.

Susan Patterson paid for her year-long membership in advance. She said Zone’s original gym in Cherry Creek was very nice. But around Thanksgiving of 2023, members were notified that they gym would be temporarily moving for renovations.

Patterson said they chose an abandoned Container Store across the street.

“We were supposed to be doing ballet barre, and there was no barre,” she said. “We were using folding chairs.”

Then Patterson said she was informed the gym was being moved further away to the Jewish Community Center in Glendale.

“I didn’t want to go to another place,” she said. “I just wanted my money back.”

But getting that refund proved to be difficult.

9NEWS found court records that indicated Zone agreed to vacate its original Cherry Creek location in late November of 2023, as landlords accused the company of owing more than $4.9 million in rent. A judge granted an emergency order allowing the landlord to change the locks at the gym after the landlord found Zone had not vacated the building on time and showed photos of people continuing to workout – along with a sign telling members the building was being renovated.

Bruce Banker is the founder of Zone Athletic Clubs. He also owned a number of Prestige Fitness locations across the Denver metro area.

In February of 2023, Banker and Prestige Fitness were sued by a landlord in Arvada over unpaid rent. In December of 2024, a judge ruled in favor of the landlord in the amount of $2.7 million.

In November of 2023, members of the Arvada Prestige Fitness were transferred to a nearby YMCA. But the YMCA sued Banker and Prestige for violating a contract in that case – arguing Prestige agreed to pay 60% of member dues to the YMCA each month for three months, but only paid the first month, according to a complaint filed in the lawsuit.

In a default judgement in late 2024, the court ordered Banker and Prestige Fitness to pay the YMCA more than $96,000. But court records show that judgement hasn’t been satisfied.

Steve On Your Side has tried for months to reach Banker about these issues, but he had never responded to phone calls, text messages or emails.


State law allows these transfers

His son, Brad Banker, served as chief operating officer for Zone Athletic Clubs.

In a phone call on Monday, Banker said these membership transfers are standard practice in the gym industry.

“People in the gym industry do this all the time,” he said. “We’ve bought and sold, you know, numerous membership bases.

“We in the gym industry try to help each other out with, you know, keeping these, you know, selling of the membership base. That’s all.”

The Colorado Consumer Protection Act includes a specific section on health clubs. It only bans gyms from transferring memberships to other locations if those locations are beyond five miles away.

Banker did tell Steve On Your Side that he’s honoring members requests to cancel their memberships without the 30-day notice and offering some refunds.

He emailed Hoffman over the weekend to tell him his January and February dues would be refunded, along with an annual maintenance fee he paid in early December.

In that email, Banker also threatened a lawsuit over Hoffman’s complaints posted on social media, calling him a “keyboard princess” and telling him “good luck with your fake and libtard news story.”

On Monday, Banker told Steve On Your Side he said things he shouldn’t have in that email and was only responding so harshly because he felt he was being bullied online.

He said he refunded both Hoffman and McEwan.

He said he’s happy to honor other refund and cancellation requests to members who email info@zoneathleticclubs.com.

Steve Staeger is the consumer investigator at 9NEWS. Anna Hewson is the consumer investigative producer. Contact Steve On Your Side with tips about this or any consumer story or problem.