Longtime residents might remember the 1980s here in the Valley as a time of chaos and crashes. Now known as the Savings and Loan Crisis, banks and financial institutions across the state went belly-up and the Valley’s booming real estate market went into a free-fall. Of course, things stabilized and Greater Phoenix returned to its normal rocket ship-style growth by the early 1990s. But for one young executive, that crisis created a unique opportunity that changed both her career and the entire fitness industry here in Arizona.
Meet Carol Nalevanko, the longtime president of DMB Sports Clubs and a familiar face to the thousands of members at the four Valley locations of DMB’s Village Health Clubs & Spas. In fact, Nalevanko has been with DMB since long before it was known as the Village, starting in 1980 as a fresh-faced college graduate straight from the University of South Dakota. After driving to Phoenix with her sorority friends and following the hand-written directions taped to their dashboard, Nalevanko responded to a help wanted ad in the newspaper for a small fitness club in northwest Phoenix named Metro Sport & Health Club. “I thought I’d just be filling out an application, but instead I did an interview that day, and they called back at 4:30 p.m. and said, ‘Can you start the next day?’”
While at Metro Sport & Health Club, Nalevanko quickly learned the true secret to success in the fitness industry, and it was nothing like what she’d learned while studying for her degree in Recreation Administration. “Working as an activities director gave me great first-hand experience about the importance of human connections and the social element to any successful fitness facility. As I grew into a leadership role, those same skillsets of building community, being flexible and changing with the times, and also focusing on long-term relationships rather than trying to ‘win’ every negotiation, helped us not only make the club grow, but it’s been a major key to our success.”
Led by Nalevanko and her executive team, The Village is proud to support its local communities, dedicating $40,000 per club annually for fundraisers and silent auctions. Focused on community-based and family-centric charities, highlights include supporting Operation School Bell to help underserved children get new clothes for the school year, volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, hosting a shoe drive for St. Vincent de Paul, hosting a water bottle drive every summer, collecting dog food for local shelters, and toy and food drives every holiday season.
Back to the S&L crash: Asked to evaluate the opportunity to purchase the Village Tennis Center, a small facility with only 15,000 square feet of indoor space and 20 tennis courts, Nalevanko recalls, “It was not very well maintained, or managed. But I called my boss and said, ‘The facility needs a lot of work, but it’s a great location and an opportunity worth pursuing.’ It was a risk but a risk worth taking. I also had seen the power of how the right management and the right community can make all the difference, if you invest in both.”
Now known as the Camelback Village Health Club & Spa, it’s the company’s flagship location. And, after four major remodels and expansion, it’s still the heartbeat of the company. Which leads to another key to Carol’s long-term success, both in life and business: Never stop moving and evolving with the times. “One of our biggest challenges is to stay current and relevant, which means constantly recalculating our use of space.”
Wanting to add dedicated pickleball courts while not taking away tennis or basketball courts like many facilities do, Nalevanko decided to cash in some of the chips she’d earned over her decades as a hands-on business leader. “We’ve always worked hard to be good neighbors to both our nearby businesses and also our local governments.” When the Village received advance notice that the resort across the street from the Gainey Village was planning a remodel, Nalevanko worked directly with the resort’s management to lease some underused tennis courts for the Village to use as their new pickleball courts. “It was a great win-win for both properties,” she says. Similarly, when they looked to expand at the DC Ranch Village, the only nearby land available was owned by the Scottsdale Unified School District. “Fortunately, we’ve worked closely with the neighboring elementary school since the club was built,” Carol says. “So that pre-existing relationship helped us to secure a unique public-private agreement to lease the space we needed to expand.”
Moving forward, Nalevanko is still focused on keeping the Village nimble and responsive to changing customer needs and desires, led by the recent shift from mere physical fitness to empowering recovery and wellness. It’s a trend that first came into focus during what she calls the most devastating moment of her career, the COVID-19 pandemic. But looking back, she says it also reinforced the importance of her industry. “COVID really was a turning point in highlighting the importance of physical, and also mental fitness.” And the proof is evident in what changes were made to create space for new equipment and treatments. After studying how members were using the space post COVID, the Village began turning old workspace conference rooms into recovery and cryotherapy spaces, replacing office chairs with massage chairs and adding compression boots and other recovery equipment.
Says Nalevanko, “If you read about Blue Zones, where people tend to live longer, healthier lives, it’s a combination of diet, exercise and also a healthy social community — which are all things I’ve emphasized as differentiators for our health clubs, versus a mere fitness facility provider. From member happy hours and hikes to ski trips and white-water rafting, what helps keep the Village’s bottom line healthy is, we don’t just want you to sign up, but hope to give you every reason to show up, join the fun and get and stay healthy.”
Did You Know: According to Statistica, fitness industry brings in $100 billion annually worldwide, and more than 65 million Americans have gym memberships.
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