DeWITT — Hercules Gym, which has operated in the Syracuse area for nearly 40 years, is under new ownership and signed a five-year lease to operate in a new location.
The strength-training facility operates in a 12,500-square-foot space at 6361 Thompson Road in DeWitt.
RAV Properties, LLC, a Jamesville–based real-estate investment company, announced the lease signing in a news release distributed on Jan. 15.
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The new owners, Rheta West and Pete Knutsen, bought the business from Joe Dardano in a transaction that closed on Dec. 29. West and Knutsen, who are a couple and long-time members of the gym, bought the business for $50,000, they said.
West has been a member for six years, and Knutsen, about three years. Both are competitive power lifters, they say.
Dardano launched the business as Spartan Gym in 1976, according to its website. It had previously operated in a 6,000-square-foot space at 2004 Teall Ave. in Salina.
The new location opened Jan. 19, but the business plans a formal opening in February. Both West and Knutsen spoke with CNYBJ at the gym on Jan. 19.
The previous tenant, another gym called VB Performance Fitness, closed and left behind a turf field, rubber-mat flooring, and finished bathrooms, according to Knutsen.
The vacated space “made it good for a gym,” says West.
The couple heard about the space as they were discussing the gym’s sale with Dardano, says Knutsen.
RAV Properties was seeking a tenant that would also operate a gym, according to West.
Robert Lieberman, who owns RAV Properties, knows Phil Molinaro, one of the trainers at Hercules Gym, says West. Lieberman’s tenant search was happening as West and Knutsen were discussing the gym’s future with Dardano.
He had built a relationship with both West and Knutsen and was comfortable having them operate the gym and move it to the new location.
“Although he wasn’t in a position to be able to move it and carry it on, we were, and so he allowed us to purchase it from him,” says West.
Dardano remains with the business for now as its lone full-time employee, she adds. Hercules Gym is also seeking additional trainers.
Dardano, at age 68, was looking to move away from the business when he pursued the sale, Knutsen says.
The Teall Avenue location needed repair work but still catered to a core group of about 70 members who were loyal to the gym, he adds.
“There’d be nowhere else we’d want to go train, if it wasn’t open,” says Knutsen. In moving the gym to Thompson Road, he and West figured they might be able to attract additional power lifters.
With operations at the new facility along Thompson Road, Knutsen believes, “I think [we] could actually grow it.”
Hercules Gym features an indoor turf strip for training on the 40- yard dash. It also has an Olympic lifting platform; two power lifting monolifts; an Okie dead-lift bar; dumbbells that range in weight from 1 to 200 pounds; competition bench press; men’s and women’s locker rooms and showers; 19-foot ceilings; and “multi-discipline” workstations, according to the RAV Properties release.
West and Knutsen want to expand their online and social-media presence where the business could promote its membership rates, deals, and make it more convenient for members to pay their membership fees. They also hope to hold power-lift meets and seminars at the gym, says West.
About the owners
West says she is the top ranked female power lifter in the world in her weight class at 148 pounds, with the strength to squat-lift 675 pounds.
“My squat is higher than any woman, regardless of weight, ever in the history of power lifting,” says West.
She has lifted weights for a quarter century, but has been power lifting competitively for eight years, she adds.
Beyond her weight-lifting activity, West also works full time as a systems analyst at UTC Climate, Controls & Security, a unit of Hartford, Conn.–based United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX), at its operations in DeWitt.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the SUNY Institute of Technology, which is now called SUNY Polytechnic Institute.
Knutsen has been lifting weights for about 11 years and participated in his first power-lifting meet about seven years ago, he says, and has recorded a dead lift of 735 pounds.
A dead lift is defined as a lift made from a standing position, without the use of a bench or other equipment.
For now, he will operate the gym in a full-time capacity, he says.
Knutsen, a New Jersey native, graduated from Corning East High School in 2006, where he earned all-state honors as an offensive lineman for the school’s football team, he says.
He later earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Cortland in 2010 and enrolled in the Ph.D. program in the same discipline at Syracuse University before eventually changing his mind.
The property owner
Since acquiring it in 2010, RAV Properties has been rehabilitating and improving the multi-tenanted industrial-warehouse property at 6361 Thompson Road.
The completed work includes restoration and monitoring of the sprinkler system; improved outdoor illumination; new interior energy-saving lighting programs; replacement windows; and more than 140,000 square feet of new energy-saving roofing.
The facility currently has about 54,000 square feet of affordable warehousing space, according to the news release.