bkenosha magazine

While other kids were buying ice-cream cones, Janie Dziedzic was saving money. She grew up in a family with five kids and parents who worked hard to get by. “Don’t get caught in the rent trap,” her father used to say, “save your money.” She did. By the time she graduated from Schaumburg HS, she had saved $10,000.

Born in Chicago and raised in Illinois and Michigan, Janie Dziedzic, a co-owner of Anytime Fitness in downtown Kenosha, got off to a fast start in the business world. She took the $10,000 she had saved and bought an arboriculture or tree care service. She also earned a real-estate license while working at Fed-Ex. The Fed Ex job and arbiculture business brought in enough money to buy a house in Riverwoods, Illinois, which she bought with her real-estate license. “Within just over a year after high school I already owned a business and a home,” she said in a recent interview.

Janie lived in Riverwoods until three years ago, dealing in real-estate when she decided to move to Kenosha. Why? Because she found Kenosha a “valuable place to ‘invest’” and because of the “famously friendly Kenosha Midwestern people.” In her view, “The downtown merchants have a wonderful ’support thy neighbor’ ethic not found elsewhere. I love it. It inspires me.”

Although Janie is the co-owner of four area fitness clubs (with Louie Arecco), and has licenses for 12 more between Milwaukee and Chicago, her initial focus was real-estate. She purchased the Art Deco limestone building at the southwest corner of 6th Ave. and 56th Street. “Anytime Fitness was a response to the needs of Kenosha, this vacant building I bought, and to the question, ‘how do you promote the economic wellness of the community?’” Janie realized downtown needed foot traffic and felt a health club “would be ideal, it would enrich the quality of life” She solicited companies and trainers to build a health club, investing $20,000 in floor plans for one potential tenant who did not follow through so, she and Louis Arecco decided to open one themselves.

It filled a need. “I think people are hungry for a place where they can work out after 9 p.m,” Janie noted. Many members such as the police, firemen and medical staff work second shift. “Where do they go with all of their adrenalin after their done working? They don’t want to go to bars. I felt like a hero when I opened this gym because people said ‘Oh, my gosh! I have something to do when my friends and family are sleeping’. Some of our busiest hours are between 10:30 and 12:30.”

An additional benefit for Kenosha is the fact that people come to the club late at night and see that downtown is safe. Women are coming here at 2 am. As a precaution, Anytime Fitness has security measures in place. Members receive a small key chip that unlocks the door to the club and identifies them. The system knows if a person is going in or out and to keep members safe, it sets off an alarm if a person comes in without a key then delivers a video replay to the surveillance system. If a person wants to walk home, the club offers a “panic button” with a block range. They can also wear it while working out and in the shower. Janie noted that when the “panic button” is triggered, the police come quickly because it is a personal safety device instead of a door alarm.

The equipment in the club is state of art as well. There is a computer terminal that creates an individualized 36 week workout program. Members are able to pick different types of programs such as sports, delayed aging, and general fitness to name a few. The workout program, targeting cardio and strengthening, indicates which machines to use and in what order. All the machines are wirelessly connected to the computer and record such things as a member’s seat position, range of motion, and height. If a person is on the wrong machine or is going too fast, or did not do a complete rep (because it knows the person’s range of motion), the machine will indicate that. If a member wants to go out of order they can. The machine will let them know they are on the wrong machine, keep track of what they do, and then take them back to the machine they missed. It also gives extra credit, trying to get the member to go a little harder or farther and increases the weight over time, giving periodic strength tests. “It keeps track of everything,” Janie noted and “we can print out the complete history of everything you did this last year.”

For those who want to work on free weights but don’t have the experience, Anytime Fitness provides trainers. “We have a lot of really phenomenal trainers. One trainer’s schedule is filled with appointments scheduled out for the next 12 months.” “He’s changing lives. People just love him.” There are four highly qualified trainers at the Kenosha Anytime Fitness.

A side benefit of the hi-tech nature of the club is that it broadcasts free WI-FI downtown. The signal covers the area from the Lakefront to Sheridan Rd., and from Library Park to the Best Western. “Mo’s has an ‘internet cafe’ and they are using our WI-FI system” Janie noted. Janie did this “to be able to communicate with the community.” They publish notices about dance classes and events and sell adds on pop-ups that appear every fifteen minutes (only while surfing or changing web pages). Equinox, Moes, and a few others have advertised already.

In addition to providing free WI-Fi to the downtown, Anytime Fitness provides satellite TV viewable on the cardio machines. As an additional public service, they plan to dedicate a channel to local programming and community activities.

A focus of Anytime Fitness is to “take away barriers between people and their goals.” The 24 hour nature of the club is one way of removing barriers for busy people with long schedules. We don’t want people to wait to get on cardio,” Janie said. “Instead we will cap off our membership sales and open a club 3 miles away in a nearby neighborhood. Members enjoy free reciprocity so they can go to over a thousand clubs worldwide. There is a new Anytime Fitness club opening every single day.” Another fitness industry barrier discovered by Anytime Fitness is the condition and quality of the equipment. “People are tired of the “out of order” signs and want a quality work out, so we offer our members only the top tier of the top brands of commercial equipment, Nautilus, Precor & Life Fitness. All the clubs feature new equipment that is simple to use so members don’t get frustrated. They can surf their favorite TV channels on all the cardio equipment and to keep things simple as you move from the treadmill to the elliptical to the bikes, all the panels are the same, from the TV controls to the simple “quick start” button.

Locker rooms are another typical gym barrier. Part of the unique design of the clubs is that there are no locker rooms. “People just hate locker rooms. They don’t want to undress in front of others and they don’t want to see naked people either. In this day and age with video cell phones, locker rooms have become extremely problematic. For obvious reasons, video surveillance is not an appropriate security option for locker rooms. Anytime Fitness members shower safely in individualized private rooms without the need to lock-up their bags.”

“Our goal is to make sure people get the best fitness environment for their needs. Part of this strategy is to make the club as comfortable as possible. We furnish the club like home. They really like being here and having the view of the lake is really a treat for them.” Janie also mentioned that the third floor location of the club is a “phenomenal place to watch fireworks. We turn down the lights. You can see everything from here. People can work on the treadmill while watching the fireworks.”

There are two shower rooms, two tanning rooms, and two bathrooms. Janie plans on using the same formula in future clubs. When Janie and Louie purchased the three-story Art Deco office building it needed to be remodeled. “It was very dark. There were narrow, dark halls and little dark rooms with a window, but solid doors and no glass to let the light into the halls.” She remodeled the entire building. Now, rooms finished in a cherry wood color, are flooded with light by rows of windows.

On the third floor is the Anytime Fitness club. Three of the floors have mixed uses. Some of the spaces will be rented as offices. A tax accounting service, a law firm, and Jeff Arnson, a microscopist, massage practitioners and the President of the International Microscopy Association, have already set up shop. Janie is also setting aside space to sell nutritional products and fitness clothing and paraphernalia. The most noticeable feature of the second floor is a large room rented by the hour overlooking 6th Ave. It is to be used for various functions from yoga classes to political events. “We have all sorts of things booked in there,” Janie said. One of the most popular events is the ballroom dance group “Learn to Dance,” that uses the room weekly. “At night, all the street lights, line up like a spectacular runway. The room really has a romantic kind of glow.” On the first floor, there will be a store that will sell nutritional supplements. There is also a phenomenal conference or board room available to the tenants.

Janie plans on utilizing the wide open spaces and conference room for corporate retreats. The idea is that the attendees may want to break-up their seminars and meetings with a yoga or Zumba class “to get the energy going so they can brainstorm some more.” And while they are downtown, attendees hopefully will shop. In addition, Anytime Fitness offers corporate rates and wellness programs.

One of the commercially attractive things about running a fitness club is the demographic it attracts. “It’s ideal,” Janie noted. “They’re over 18. They have a credit card or checking account and take care of themselves. This is the demographic that advertisers want to reach.” which provides another revenue stream for the business: advertising. A company called Health Club Panel Network rents space on the stairway and walls of the club, finds the national advertisers, and changes the ads periodically.

The health club market is a growing one. The number of health club members more than doubled from 1990 to 2006, to more than 42 million. Members are evenly split between male and female, the median age is 36, almost three-quarters are college graduates, and the average household income is over $95,000. In the case of the Kenosha Harborside Anytime Fitness, 25,000 people come through the door each year.

The excitement Janie has for the health club is obvious .. So is the reward in her eyes. “We really save lives and help people transform. It’s exciting to be around this type of culture and most of all, it is staggering to think that if all physically inactive Americans were to begin exercising, we as a nation could realize a savings of $77 billion in direct medical costs each year*. Just think about that ‘economic stimulus’”. She is on a “mission to turn around the unhealthy report card of Kenosha.” Hopefully, she will help transform Downtown Kenosha as well.