Site Selection Report
Mid-size Fitness Club, Madrid & Barcelona Metropolitan Areas

L'Hospitalet is Spain's densest municipality and Collblanc is one of its densest barrios: 52,800 people live within a ten-minute walk, more than any other site in either metro, and 12,600 of them are in the 30–44 cohort. Against that base only two gyms operate within 600 m, giving 17,600 residents per competitor, twice the next-best candidate. Three supermarkets sit within a five-minute walk, footfall is steady seven days a week (weekends only 6% below weekdays) and 83% of it is local, which is the profile of a neighbourhood that will join a club and keep paying.

The asset is priced at €446/m², a fraction of the Barcelona-metro median for retail for sale, because it is offered as a cesión de remate: the assignment of an auction award. That is a title and timing risk, not a location risk, and it is the single item that decides whether this is a purchase or a lease negotiation with whoever ends up holding title.

The lowest-cost entry in the shortlist and the most conventional building: a street-level retail unit with six metres of frontage, two shop windows, extraction already in place and a basement that can take changing rooms and plant. It sits on the street that leads down from the Santa Eulàlia metro, and the footfall curve is morning-weighted (31% between 6 and 12 h), the pattern of a commuter neighbourhood where pre-work training sells.

Half the households around it clear €40k, comfortably above the brief, and four supermarkets lie within five minutes. Competition is the watch item: five gyms within 600 m, though only one within 400 m. At €3,200 a month the rent is roughly 60% below what comparable Madrid space commands, which leaves room to out-spec the local operators on equipment and finish.

If the brand's positioning is premium, this is the site. Arganzuela's Chopera is one of Madrid's regenerated riverside barrios: three-quarters of households within a ten-minute walk earn above €40k, and spending power per resident is €32,100, the highest in the shortlist by a wide margin and 60% above Collblanc. Competition is the lowest of any Madrid site measured, three gyms within 600 m, and the unit has the attributes a club wants: 345 m² on one ground-floor plate, 15 metres of frontage, and a private vehicle bay for equipment deliveries.

The trade-off is depth. The resident base, 18,300, is the smallest of the recommended sites, so membership will have to be won on yield rather than volume, and the rent, €8,500 a month, is the highest in the set. Footfall is weekday-driven (29% lower at weekends), consistent with a working-age residential district.

The flagship option. A corner on Calle de Alcalá with 35 metres of façade, high ceilings, air conditioning and the highest footfall in the Madrid screen, in a barrio of 41,400 residents and eight supermarkets within a five-minute walk. On catchment and visibility alone it would lead the list.

It does not lead because eight gyms already trade within 600 m, including at least one national low-cost chain. The residents-per-gym figure, 4,600, is the weakest among the recommended sites, and the 791 m² spread across three floors with 295 m² at street level is a less efficient plate than it appears. Advance it only if the brand intends to compete head-on in a proven gym market with a clearly differentiated product, and only on a lease; the €3.01M sale price (€3,805/m²) is not supported by a fitness use.

Physically the best gym building in the screen: 740 m² of open floor under five-metre ceilings, a mezzanine for offices, changing rooms already in place and loading access, in a block the 22@ plan is turning from workshops into housing and offices. Competition is light (two gyms within 600 m, none within a ten-minute walk mapped) and the 30–44 share, 24%, matches the brief.

What it lacks is today's street life: a footfall index of 25,000 is a tenth of Collblanc's, income is at the brief's floor, and the unit needs full refurbishment. This is a site to acquire ahead of the neighbourhood rather than to open in immediately, and a sensible fallback if the Collblanc title cannot be cleared.

Alcobendas is one of Spain's highest-income municipalities and this former furniture store in its centre, next to Avenida de España, is priced at €482/m². The catchment is sound: 27,000 residents, 56% of households above €40k, two supermarkets and three transit stops within five minutes, and footfall that holds at weekends.

The building is the issue. Three-metre ceilings are below the 3.5–4 m a club needs for functional and group zones, the frontage is only four metres, the floor plate is split over three levels and the listing itself says ventilation and air conditioning need replacing. Four gyms already operate within 600 m. It is a cheap freehold that would need a large capital programme to work as a club.

The only candidate with a single gym within 600 m and none within 400 m, in a 63,000-inhabitant city with 47% of nearby households above €40k. It fails the brief on depth, 16,450 residents and 3,625 aged 30–44 within a ten-minute walk, and the asset is a mixed-use building with homes above and a former bakery workshop below, not a club shell. It is recorded here because Granollers and the Vallès corridor are under-served, and a smaller-format or second-phase search should return to them.