A popular gym looks like it will go when the King Alfred Leisure Centre is finally redeveloped, a senior councillor said tonight (Thursday 19 December).
Labour councillor Alan Robins said that the new King Alfred would have an extensive gym but FitLab, formerly Cheetahs, would not be moving into the building.
He was responding to a public question from former Green councillor Christopher Hawtree who asked about the future of FitLab which currently occupies four floors of the seafront leisure centre in Kingsway.
Mr Hawtree told a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting that there had been a gym at the site for six decades.
He asked how the rebuilt swimming pool and leisure centre “will accommodate all of the great-value, very friendly gym now known as FitLab”.
The gym “occupied four floors with 250 well-spaced items of ‘kit’, many of these more substantial than available elsewhere”, he said.
Mr Hawtree also wanted to know whether the Brighton and Hove Boxing Team Gym would be able to stay at the site.
Mr Hawtree asked whether the council might – rather than rush ahead – wait a little longer for a new authority to be set up as foreshadowed in a government “white paper” on regional devolution published by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner this week.
Councillor Robins said: “I don’t think anyone can accuse us of rushing over the King Alfred site. It’s been over 30 years.
“What we’re aiming to provide is a better, bigger facility. We’re not doing anything detrimental. We’re trying to provide a 21st century state-of-the-art leisure complex – and that’s all we’re doing.”
Outside the meeting, Mr Hawtree said that it was hard to see that a new gym would be bigger than FitLab and the current Freedom Leisure gym combined.
