Minnesota is where it all began when Life Time opened the doors to its very first club in Brooklyn Park in 1992. The team has been intent on bringing its healthy-way-of-life offerings to more people ever since.
Now 32 years later, with more than 175 athletic country clubs across the United States and Canada, Life Time continues this effort by adding new locations, innovating within its facilities, and expanding the digital experience.
While Life Time’s presence has expanded to 31 states (and growing!), Minnesota is among those with the most Life Time athletic country clubs — and the company is committed to continuing its investment in its home market. This includes expanding on the current portfolio, which comprises 22 (soon to be 23) club locations in the greater Twin Cities area, as well as standalone locations for tennis, pickleball, and swimming, respectively, and three Life Time Work locations. Life Time’s corporate headquarters is also located in the western suburb of Chanhassen.
“Minnesota is a great market for Life Time,” says Aaron Koehler, senior vice president of real estate and development at Life Time. “Minnesotans are generally physically active and health conscious — it’s a community that values a place like Life Time. If you visit any of our clubs here, you can feel the positive energy and see the dedication of members toward their healthy-living goals. There’s always a ton of excitement, too, when there are new innovations in this market.”
Let’s check out the ways Life Time is expanding in Minnesota:
Ground-Up Builds
Life Time Rosemount, the 23rd athletic country club in the land of 10,000 lakes, is opening late 2024. It’s the first new club in the state since 2019, when Life Time Edina at Southdale opened.
This Life Time club, which sits on 12 acres and spans 90,325 square feet, was developed as a joint effort with the city of Rosemount. “The Rosemount city leaders are very proactive participants in the development of their community, and they desired to have a recreational amenity for the community but did not want the ongoing expense of operating a community center,” says Koehler. “Life Time was approached, and we were able to reach an agreement that provided the city with the amenity they desired. This is a new avenue of growth for Life Time, and one that I hope can be a model we replicate with other cities.”
Key features of the club include six designated studios for yoga, Pilates, cycle, and other unique-to-Life Time group-class formats; an expansive workout floor with state-of-the-art equipment; a Kids Academy that offers programming and child care; an indoor lap pool, as well as an outdoor pool deck complete with a lap pool, zero-entry pool, and waterslides; three indoor and four outdoor pickleball courts; luxurious locker rooms, each offering a whirlpool, sauna, steam room, and cold plunge; and more. (Read more: “Step Inside: Life Time Rosemount.”)
Transformational Renovations to Longstanding Clubs
Life Time Highland Park is a well-established club in St. Paul, Minn., that’s been open since 1995. Though the space has been updated several times over the years, the club is receiving a massive refresh that will be complete this winter. The previously 50,700-square-foot Life Time Highland Park location will now offer 71,000-square-feet of space to its members.
This includes a first floor with an entirely new look and feel. Members will find free weights and weight machines, a functional training area, space for Alpha training classes, and four studios for group fitness classes.
The 20,000-square-foot second floor, which sits street-level, is brand new and filled with plenty of natural light thanks to the large windows. This floor houses all the cardio equipment as well as turf for performing sprints or sled pushes, a stretching area, two OUTRACE training structures, and a designated space for GTX training classes.
Life Time Highland Park also has an LT Recovery zone, which provides access to Dynamic Personal Trainers who can provide direction, care, and support for members around their fitness recovery efforts. There are high-tech recovery tools, too, including compression therapy, as well as services like nutrition coaching, and metabolic testing. (Read more: “Step Inside: Life Time Highland Park.”)
Standalone Pickleball Complexes
Just steps away from Life Time Chanhassen and the Life Time corporate offices is the Life Time Chanhassen Pickleball Complex, which opened in April 2024. This pickleball-only facility was built from the ground up and is the first of its kind from Life Time.
This 45,000-square-foot space offers eight indoor pickleball courts and seven outdoor courts. The complex also features men’s, women’s, and family locker rooms, a retail space, indoor and outdoor lounges, and two self-serve drink stations where members can purchase beer, wine, and seltzers. Pre-packaged food is also available. (Read more: “Step Inside: Life Time Chanhassen Pickleball.”)
“It’s nice to hear the excitement from members around the new Chanhassen Pickleball Complex,” says Zoey Weil, a pickleball pro at Life Time Chanhassen Pickleball Complex. “It’s a spacious environment, so when people play here, they have the opportunity to reserve courts and work on specific shots. My personal favorite part is the outdoor courts — they’re a great place to train for tournaments that are held outside.”
An additional perk of this complex is that a premium membership grants access to all athletic country clubs in Minnesota.
Innovative Offerings for Performance and Longevity
MIORA Performance and Longevity is another new-to-Life Time offering that focuses on helping members optimize their health span. First launched in late 2023 at the Life Time Target Center location in downtown Minneapolis, MIORA is all about proactively addressing health concerns and supporting optimal long-term health.
“Life Time is extending its reach to continue helping people live happier, healthier lives through this offering,” says Cliff Edberg, senior director of MIORA Performance and Longevity at Life Time. “Historically, our trainers, nutrition coaches, studio leaders, and instructors do a really great job within their scope of practice by providing guidance and help with exercise and recovery. But we have a lot of members with significant metabolic dysfunction that could be related to hormones, stress, gut health, blood sugar, thyroid, or a variety of other things.
“Until now, Life Time has never been fully equipped to extend care into these more advanced areas with therapies that require more medical oversite. By bringing MIORA to our members, we can add more certainty to everybody’s program and help them achieve the results they want — and deserve.”
MIORA members complete a comprehensive health questionnaire and undergo a robust diagnostic lab testing that analyzes metabolic function (looking at 90-plus key biomarkers). Together, the information reveals how well your body is performing now; it also provides insights into the future state of your health.
From there, the MIORA team of MDs, PAs, NPs, RNs, registered dietitians, and personal trainers collaborate to create an integrated, individualized program for each member that addresses what’s not working optimally and aims to get them on a path toward optimal health.
“People are looking for solutions for how to live a longer life,” says Jim LaValle, RPh, CCN, chief science officer at Life Time. “And by providing more advanced testing and support from an organized team where we bring the full weight of all Life Time’s resources together — medical oversite, dietitians, trainers, and ongoing check-ins — we can help guide the individual in a methodical way to achieve their goals.” (Learn more: “Living Well While You Live Long: The Growing Quest for Longevity.”)
MIORA is currently licensed to support Life Time members in Minnesota and has plans to expand to other states in the near future.
