Lakeview Athletic Club — Attraction in Lake View Township

Do not join! This gym is completely oversubscribed and has sanintary issues. (Scroll through other reviews here to find a video of worms in the showers - no joke.)

From about 3pm until they close -- early, at 7-9pm -- there is a wait for most weight machines and benches. After 5pm, lines actually form some days.

They just don't have enough hours or equipment for the number of people they have signed up. Try doing leg day after 3pm. It's basically impossible or takes twice as long.

If you take a tour, come around 5:30 or 6pm Monday through Thursday and ask specifically what steps they are taking to address overcrowding.

FREE MANAGEMENT CONSULTING FOR LVAC: You can increase capacity in one of at least two ways: (1) make better use of existing equipment by spreading the crowds out over longer operating hours, or (2) adding more weights equipment to empty space on the 3rd floor -- and to the 4th floor, by swapping out underutilized cardio machines. There is never a wait for ellipticals because you don't need 35 of them and it's not 2003.

The gym is cheap in a number of other ways that become apparent after you join. Below is a list of longstanding/recurring sanitary, maintenance, and customer service problems.

Basically after Covid they decided to try to cut every corner they could think of -- and still charge $100/month! The minute a higher-end gym with better hours opens in this neighborhood there is going to be an exodus.

List of longstanding/recurring problems:

Not cleaned well. Locker rooms never cleaned during the day, as far as I can tell; so they are gross by nighttime. Worms (actually larvae of drain gnats) are often present in the showers.

Dishonesty. There's all these references to a rock climbing wall, but it's been closed for many years and the staff will tell you it is not reopening. They are too cheap to pay for the needed insurance.

A/C problems. Every summer. All summer.

Lots of nickel-and-dime deferred maintenance: Shower heads have been in need of replacement for years and often leak, wasting water. Water fountain's filter status has been broken for years. Flaps of rubber coating literally peeling off the dumbells in the 2nd floor studio.

Zero communication. They have an app and our contact info. In the past they would email if, say, the pool was closed one day. But in recent years they can't be bothered. The locker room was randomly closed for two days a little while back, but rather than letting people know that, you had to physically arrive at the gym and the see a sign saying that it was closed. How hard is it to write an email?

Nonresponsive management. Use their contact form, check the box asking for a response, and they will ignore you. 100% of the time.

Weird music. Not sure who in this Boystown gym they think wants to listen to sexist rap music. Read the room, LVAC. (Notably, their other locations don't play music like that. Some kind of stereotype about Boystown seems to be involved at LVAC.)

Lakeview urgently needs a TMPL or a VIDA or some comparable higher-end gym. There are at least two vacant gym locations nearby so hopefully someone will see the busines opportunity to have a higher-end gym in this neighborhood again.

LVAC could be a good gym again if they got better management, took care of the facility better, and expanded the hours. But they seem to have settled on a business model of being more of a budget gym....

K...let's start at 5 stars, 'cause who doesn't wanna be a 5 on a 5 star scale? 🥰 I'll justify this b/c it's a gym, it's in my neighborhood, and it's close by.

Now, because it's THIS gym, let's move down the scale.

For starters, this gym is pretty dirty. The cleaning staff does a mediocre job at best and, if you're really paying attention? You'll notice that the same towels we're provided with to wipe sweat from ourselves are the same towels they use to clean. Literally. Those skunked up stained towels that are in the mix with the rest of the dingy piles? Yeah, those probably (somewhat poorly) cleaned a machine or something similar, then got laundered with the rest of the towels and now you're wiping your face with them. Enjoy!

Further, there's dust and grime everywhere (yet they still asphyxiate me by casually swiping around cleaning chemicals while I'm doing cardio). Heck, they won't even clean the front doors to remove what looks like throwup on the outward facing handles inside the glass. And you KNOW that staff and management can clearly see both. Check out that pile of dust that's collected under every machine. Or in the corners of the windowsills (not to mention that they NEVER clean the exterior of the windows and those f'in cobwebs have been there for years). You can also be sure that the green lawn floor covering on the 3rd floor has never been deep cleaned. I could go on and on, but just take a closer look pretty much anywhere and you'll see this and MUCH more.

Now let's mention the men's locker room sinks that don't provide hot water. Or the handles that you lift to turn the water on that fall on their own. Or the constantly broken soap dispensers. Or the mold on the inside edges of the mirrors. Or the wet areas that I won't even get near b/c they are frighteningly unclean and unsanitized. Again, I could go on and on.

Now on to the relatively poor equipment upkeep. Most of the cable and other machines need lubrication b/c they don't operate smoothly. Many of the machine pads need replacing and the machines themselves need deep cleaning. The mats SUCK and are generally dirty. It's obvious that no one on staff does regular checks on the machines to ensure functioning, cleanliness, or timely and often much-needed repairs. Seemingly, we're supposed to overlook all of this because we're provided mostly broken spray bottles--yes, you too are the cleaning staff--to spritz and wipe this, that, and the other with. The dirty cleaning supply buckets and lids that are used for these bottles and to collect dirty towels and washcloth cleaning rags just add to the charm of it all.

A few of these things would be bearable if I felt that staff was actually attending to them, but no. I've brought these things up many times over the YEARS and pretty much nothing gets addressed--thus the above-mentioned.

I'm surely missing many things, like the mostly staring at the phone, utterly monotone greetings you often get entering and exiting (with one notable and pleasant exception), but this post sums up a good bit. I'm also likely skunking this 2-star gym by giving 1-star, but after writing this post I'm feeling the latter.

So...back to me wishing that some other, clean and delightful gym drops itself into the neighborhood so I can literally drop this place like a rock and head...

As someone who has been a member since 2017, I have mixed feelings about this gym now in 2023 knowing what it used to be. Pre-COVID, this gym was top notch but it never quite bounced back. The gym itself is pretty decent. Overall, there are five floors and a rooftop pool:

Floor 1/Basement: Men’s locker room and pool/hot-tub (20 yds and three lanes)

Floor 2/Main Floor: Entrance, cycle studio, women’s locker room, and a rock climbing wall (which has been closed since 2020)

Floor 3: Dance studio for various classes

Floor 4: Weight room on turf w/ four squat racks, a smith machine, a couple of benches, a bunch of dumbbells, barbells, cables, machines, etc.

Floor 5: Dance studio for yoga classes and a large cardio area w/ treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, erg machines, etc.

Roof: Pool that is open during the summer (people mostly just lounge here)

The main complaint I have with this gym is the hours. The gym has never returned to pre-COVID hours and currently closes at 9pm on Mon-Thurs, 8pm on Fri, and 7pm on the weekend. This is pretty embarrassing. The result is a gym that has the same foot traffic as pre-COVID but fewer hours. X-Sport (3 blocks south) and Planet Fitness (several blocks north) are both 24 hrs. FFC East Lakeview and Quads Gym both close at 10pm during the week.

This gym tries to distinguish itself for its classes but my perception is that programing seems to have been decreased post-COVID as well (at least the spin and free-climb classes). The rock-climbing wall has never re-opened to my knowledge and there has not been any indication that it ever will. As some of the other reviewers have mentioned, last summer there were AC/HVAC issues that made working out feel like you were in a sauna.

The locker rooms have showers, the lockers have key code locks attached, and there are towels available for you to use. The pools both seem small but if you really wanted to you could go to the West Loop location which has a 25m pool. You can purchase personal training if you want and it seems that the trainers are pretty professional. You also used to be able to purchase sports massages here but that is no longer a thing after 2020. The employees working here are really nice although reading other reviews it seems cancellations are difficult (you must give 30 days written notice). I believe guest passes are $25.

At the end of the day, it's an okay gym. I just have a hard time knowing how much better it used to be. All I really want is for all CAC locations to return to their old hours of operation and I would be fine with the other post-COVID nuances (barring another...