The fitness club OOO Timir Service that used to operate in the Atrium Palace Hotel in Yekaterinburg is leaving these premises and moving to Evropa Business Center. The club will be based on the premises of an already existing wellness center Stella Nova. The company explains they had to move because of the increased rent.

‘The agreement we had with Atrium expired recently. The terms we used to work on before and the ones we have been offered for renewing the agreement are absolutely unacceptable and economically impossible,’ Timir Service’s manager Yulia Yefremova told UrBC.

Now the fitness center was based in the Atrium Palace Hotel for two years.

‘The Atrium Palace Hotel’s building is twelve years old and needs remodeling. The fitness apparatuses that we rented from the hotel have become obsolete and have worn out. At the same time, there are quite a few other fitness clubs around, so we have to be able to compete. Alas, the rent that Atrium had set virtually forced us to offer uncompetitive prices. These are the prices offered by fitness clubs with new equipment, so our company was getting itself into debt. All this grew totally unprofitable in the end,’ Ms Yefremova explained.

‘Our director Anastassiya Dukhovnovskaya kept negotiating with the hotel management via e-mail for quite a while. However, nothing could persuade our landlord to reduce the rent,’ she added.

‘Evropa came up with more reasonable rent rates, they ask for the generally accepted market price. We will now be operating on the basis of Stella Nova, although not all of our team members might agree to move to the new location,’ the manager said.