New gym pumps up Elgin mall

A west-side Elgin strip mall is about to get a shot in the arm with another new tenant.

City leaders tonight are likely to sign off on World Gym, a 6,700-square-foot, 24-hour workout center for the Otter Creek shopping mall.

If approved, it will mark the second recent new tenant in the struggling shopping center southwest of Randall Road and Route 20.

"I think it's very positive. Any time we fill up a vacant commercial and retail space, that's a plus," Mayor Ed Schock said.

In September, city leaders signed off on an incentive agreement to bring a Burlington Coat Factory store to the former Dominick's location. The site had been vacant since 2004. Burlington this spring will mark the first department store to open in Elgin since 1992.

The World Gym location at 268 Randall Road in Elgin is just south of the Burlington site and will mark its sixth area location, according to owner James Mecha.

The facility, he told a planning board earlier this month, will be a drop-in workout center that is staffed 24 hours a day compared to some other location where members buzz themselves in with a key card.

"The reason we picked Elgin was due to the growth and demographics here. (They have) shown that this is a target market for us," Mecha said. "We're going in a new direction and catering more to the families and to the couples and the teenager, yuppies, things like that."

City Manage Femi Folarin credited strip mall owner Stelios Aktipis for aggressively marketing Otter Creek.

"The owner of the mall is doing everything possible to get tenants," Folarin said. "That's a good tenant. That will provide traffic for that location."