BREA — Life Time Founder and CEO Bahram Akradi says you should never call his company just a “fitness club.”
“We provide a place for you to belong,” he told the Business Journal. “A social gathering. A country club’s sense of existence. It’s an athletic country club, not a gym.”
The Life Time club, which costs $90 million to develop, is located at the Brea Mall, which, like other shopping centers, has struggled in the online world. The club, built where the former Sears once stood, is now the centerpiece of Simon Properties’ $300 million mixed-use development of the Brea Mall.
The 123,000-square-foot Life Time is more than just the dumbbells, treadmills and Pilates studio; the company touts it as a full-blown, high-end social and multisensory health and wellness experience.
“Our vision and what we deliver is more of a sense of a country club,” said Akradi. “Fitness is just a component of what we do.”
Life Time Arrives
The new Brea location is the Chanhassen, Minnesota-based operator’s fourth Orange County property. The other facilities are a 92,000-square-foot spot in Irvine, a 100,000-square-foot location in San Clemente at the former Rancho San Clemente Tennis & Fitness Club and a three-story 150,000-square-foot location in Laguna Niguel.
Life Time Group Holdings, which has about 240 locations across 32 states, generated $3 billion in sales in 2025, a 15% annual increase. The publicly traded company has a $9.2 billion market cap (NYSE: LTH).
Life Time clubs are about three times larger than those of a typical LA Fitness or 24 Hour Fitness.
The newest Brea location occupies 85,000 square feet indoors, with an additional roughly 38,000 square feet of outdoor amenities across about three acres.
Beyond Life Time, Simon has built and redesigned an open-air streetscape with new shops and restaurants, including Din Tai Fung, North Italia and a Rivian dealership. A 377-unit apartment building is also under construction nearby.
Akradi said that Life Time is the main anchor of that area of the mall’s redevelopment and combines fitness, wellness, hospitality and social experiences in one place.
Inside the Life Time, amenities include saunas and cold plunge pools in the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The second floor has hydro- and cryotherapy massage beds for recovery, plus Olympic-level weights.
There are indoor and outdoor pickleball courts, a resort-style pool with cabanas and a winding water slide.
Next to a restaurant is a coworking space, spa services and a daycare area for children, all managed by specially trained staff.
There are adults-only areas for those 21 and over, with bars serving alcohol. Life Time also hosts members-only events throughout the year.
Its café serves some of the best and healthiest food in the area, according to Life Time officials. The company also makes its own supplements, with ingredients picked by Akradi himself.
“We like to say, ‘If it’s here, it’s healthy,’” said Natalie Bushaw, Life Time’s vice president of communications, as she toured the Business Journal around the newest location.
Why Orange County?
Akradi says Orange County has always been an important market for Life Time.
Like many developers, they have always struggled to find land big enough to accommodate their needs.
The company opened its first Orange County location in Laguna Niguel more than a decade ago and over the years, expanded into Irvine and San Clemente. Brea is the company’s first North Orange County location.
“We always wanted to be there,” he said of North Orange County. “But there was no piece of land for us to go buy and build this type of facility with all the parking we need.”
That changed when they partnered with Simon.
“We would have been there five years ago if we could,” he said.
While Akradi declined to disclose the project’s specific cost, he said developments of this scale range from roughly $60 million to $90 million, depending on location.
Simon owns the land and the building’s exterior, while Life Time paid for the interior improvements.
The club has about 320 employees, most of whom work part-time.
Demand Already Strong
During a preview of the newest Life Time in Brea earlier this month, individuals and families gathered at the entrance, speaking with staff and inquiring about a potential membership.
Akradi said demand was high even before the club opened.
The company accumulated a waiting list in the “high thousands” for the Brea location and expects the club to move to a waitlist shortly after opening.
Unlike many fitness centers that try to sign up several thousand members per location, Akradi said Life Time limits memberships to keep the experience special.
“We’re in the low thousands.” An individual membership starts at $349 per month, plus a $200 initiation fee. A family of four goes for $719 a month, while juniors are an additional $100.
There are also upcharges for Pilates classes and spa services such as facials and massages.
Akradi says this exclusivity has helped protect the company, even during uncertain economic times.
“We have worked our business to a place where we are focused on maximum desirability,” he said. “We want to create an experience that is unmatched.”
For Akradi, Life Time’s success is about more than just exercise equipment or fitness classes.
He envisions members spending the whole day at the club: working remotely, meeting friends, exercising, relaxing by the pool, bringing their children to activities, or just hanging out and joining social events.
“It’s part of your life,” he said. “It’s how you live your life.”
Brea Mall’s $300M Transformation Nears Completion
For Jocelyn Gubler, vice president of development at Simon Property Group, there is a sense of honor and pride when she walks around and looks at Brea Mall’s new outdoor plaza, atrium and dining and retail stores.
“I love the questions. I love being stopped when people see me in my [Simon] vest,” Gubler told the Business Journal. “I’m so proud to be part of this.”
Just yards away from the newly opened Life Time fitness center, construction workers can be seen atop scaffolding, hammering away on what will soon become a seven-story 377-unit luxury apartment building.
Banners reading “Residential Coming 2028” wrap the fenced construction site, while across the way, visitors walk around a freshly landscaped outdoor plaza and new mall entrance with stores such as Rivian, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Pacific Catch and The Melt.
Within the next two months or so, Din Tai Fung and the Kalbi Social Club will open their doors.
Simon also plans to install sculptures in the central plaza by September. A lighted mural made from acrylic panels has already been incorporated into one of the buildings near Pacific Catch, Gubler said.
“We didn’t want to just create something to check the list,” Gubler said of the city-required public art. “We wanted to really make the art part of the development, part of the community and part of the Brea story.”
The scene is a glimpse into the future of Brea Mall — a decade in the making.
“It’s almost a 10-year journey,” said Gubler, adding that Simon began the initial steps for this revitalization in 2018.
The opening of Life Time marked another visible milestone in the company’s estimated $300 million transformation of the regional shopping center, where the former Sears department store is being reimagined as a mixed-use destination anchored by luxury wellness, new restaurants, outdoor gathering spaces and hundreds of apartments.
Sears, as well as other big-box store chains like Macy’s and JCPenney, shuttered locations across the country because of the so-called retail apocalypse and changing consumer shopping behavior. As a result, mall owners like Simon Property have had to shift gears by bringing experiential retail and dining or fitness concepts like Life Time.
In the case of the shuttered Sears at the Brea Mall, Simon razed it and built an 85,000-square-foot Life Time building, curating the retail and dining options around the athletic country club anchor.
“These malls are in great locations,” Life Time founder Bahram Akradi said. “They don’t need to go under. They just need to get repurposed for more of a mixed-use development.”
For Simon, the goal is to give visitors more reasons to stay longer and return more frequently.
“We want our visitors to describe Brea Mall as North Orange County’s ultimate lifestyle destination,” Gubler said. “A place that combines exceptional dining, wellness, premier shopping, residential living and also a community gathering space.”
—Joseph Pimentel