City’s architectural committee asks Life Time gym to go back to drawing board

Two major Coral Springs developments received feedback on their site plans at the Dec. 9 Architectural Review Committee meeting, with one being told to make significant modifications to its design.

Committee members and city staff had several points of feedback to offer the architects of Life Time, the luxury gym and fitness club planning to build a two-story facility on the former Heron Bay golf course and clubhouse.

“When I look at this, I feel like I’m driving by an industrial park,” committee member Fernando Leiva said.

City staff and committee members commented the building looks too much like a single mass, and the modern style is incongruent with the homes and buildings in the area.

Representatives from the company said they plan to use precast materials for the building, which will reduce the construction process to a third of the usual timeline and require less equipment, fewer deliveries to the site, and overall lightens the construction footprint, benefitting the community.

So Life Time architects don’t have endless customization options, but they said within the “precast realm,” they can explore other patterns and design modifications.

Committee member Jorge Cifuentes applauded the company’s decision to use precast construction, but ultimately said he hopes “the final design is not what we’re looking at.”

“You said you don’t want to overpower the area, but you are,” Cifuentes said. “I don’t disagree with a gym in the area, it will be appreciated, but the accompanying design can be much better. For me, the design lacks equilibrium.”

General contractor and committee member Richard Petrillo said the design would clash with the Marriott hotel nearby and the residential area of Heron Bay, which he said is more Spanish-style than modern.

Life Time representatives said the company is trending toward a contemporary style that’s cohesive with the brand, and that they selected warm earth tones for this location to gel with the South Florida landscape.

Committee member Alex Fenech, a landscape architect, gave props to the gym for incorporating a landscape buffer that goes “above and beyond code minimum” around the building, which will be visible from two neighborhoods within Heron Bay’s residential area.

Later in the meeting, a representative of the contracted architectural firm Behar Font & Partners presented plans for the 32 Hundred project, a mixed-use complex that includes an 11-story residential building, a two-story commercial building and Bank of America drive-thru.

City staff said they were excited about the development, and committee members shared they appreciated the design, in part because it included a plaza area that would be open to the public. The plaza is meant to provide fire rescue a second access point to the complex in case of an emergency, but it will also function as a public space.

The current Bank of American drive-thru will be demolished and moved to a different part of the site.

The architect said the team was working to incorporate feedback they received from the Development Review Committee the day before on the materials and accent colors.

Leiva asked if they could consider whether it’s possible to visually break up the mass verticality of the 11-story building, and the architect said he had an idea for that.

Both development projects will go through additional rounds of reviews with the city.