We’ve written many articles about the ambitions refurbishment underway at Clapham Junction’s landmark Arding & Hobbs building, as it goes from a historic department store (which was Debenhams for its final years) to a fully refurbished and much-extended mixture of smaller shops and office space. Things are really starting to come together now, with the internal fitting-out well underway at Botanica Hall (the new bar / restaurant facing the Falcon), and we’ve now got a sneak preview of the gym that will be opening up on the corner facing up Lavender Hill.

You may be thinking – with nearly a dozen gyms already running in the area around the station, including Milo and the Bull and a recently opened branch of F45 on St John’s Hill, the giant Shapesmiths crossfit complex spread over five arches on Grant Road, Energie Fitness up Falcon Road, and not one but two branches of Fitness First either side of Clapham Junction, as well as several smaller personal trainer gyms dotted along Lavender Hill including newly launched Fitstudioz, and some more specialist sites like IronBodyFit – is there really a market for more?

However looking at the plans, it’s immediately clear that Third Space will be no ordinary gym, and is aiming to be quite a different place to many of its potential competitors. It’s enormous, for starters – it will occupy most of the basement but also a large chunk of the first floor – including an area that had originally been pencilled in by developers W.RE to be office space. Everything about the planned fit out says luxury, with considerable thought having gone in to creating a stylish and well-designed space. The Lavender Hill entrance will lead in to a curvaceous reception on the mezzanine area (pictured at the top of this article), including a lounge and cafe. The image below, which is an indicative one from the Third Space planning application, shows the entrance area, with the doors to Lavender Hill visible at the right.

In a nice touch, the development takes a very modern approach in some areas, but also works with the existing design – and is keeping many of the existing ornate ceilings from the old department store visible. This can be seen in the design for the entrance area, above, where several of the ceiling areas shown in the current view (below) have been left visible as a feature. The newer parts of the reception design will include warm timber and a touch of marble tile, together with a few metal accents to give a modern feel.

The upper floor will have a large gym and fitness area, making the most of the generous windows looking out over St John’s Road and Lavender Hill. It includes a treadmill area with views over the Falcon junction, a large multigym space, a stretch & recovery area, a separate Mind & Body studio with capacity for 30, a large HIIT studio, and several general gym spaces. The proposed floorplan below shows the indicative internal layout of this floor, with the escalators at the right being the access from the (separate) office reception on St John’s Road to the upper levels of the building.

The ceiling and the heritage windows on the first floor level are being fully restored, and will be significant part of the planned design on this floor, keeping the original features as a focus.

There’s a fair bit of careful behind-the-scenes work also underway to install acoustic flooring and provision to ensure that the rest of the building isn’t disturbed by gym noise!

Heading down to the basement leads to generous locker and changing space (well equipped with showers), a hot yoga room with a capacity of 33 people including the instructor, as well as a 25-bike cycle training room, and male and female saunas. The lickers and changing areas have again been developed in some style, echoing the rich mix of material used in the upper floor offices W.RE are fitting out – and are a cut above the usual fare!

This looks set to be a very impressive gym, and to raise the bar with a level of luxury that’s rarely seen in the sector. We know there has been some understandable concern that the premises is becoming a members-only affair rather than a just-drop in retail or food & drink offer, and that as we lose retail ‘critical mass’ this does gradually reduce the overall attractiveness of Clapham Junction as a town centre. that said, it’s hard not to be impressed by the quality of the works on Arding & Hobbs to date, and the huge investment being made here – both by developers W.RE in the building as a whole and by Third Space on the basement and first floor. This does look set to restore a lot of the rather faded glory of the building under its final years as a department store. The impact on the less-noticed back side of the building on Ilminster Gardens is already very noticeable, where a series of messy service entrances and a distinctly tatty facade that had been dominated by pipes, cables and boarded up windows has been completely restored and tidied up – and now even includes a small garden area that’s illuminated at night, significantly improving the street as a whole and the view from the houses opposite. It even includes what we reckon are a few bird boxes (above the door at the right hand side of our photo) –

There’s a very minor planning application currently in for the signage Third Space plan to install above the entrance (necessary given Arding and Hobbs is a listed building), which includes a design and access statement for the fit-out as a whole. We don’t expect this to be controversial at all, but if you do wish to see or comment on the plans, visit wandsworth.gov.uk/planning and search for application 2023/3804.

Third Space are a business that is growing quickly, with nine mostly central-London sites already up and running. Arding & Hobbs is not the only local gym Third Space are opening in Battersea: they also have a very large unit currently under development in Battersea Power Station, over two floors in the flagship building designed by star architect Frank Gehry:

It’s a similarly enormous space, that includes a sizeable part of the basement. That gym is also huge, at 28,000 square feet, but it has a slightly different focus to the one at Clapham Junction, and will include features such as a dedicated combat area and a small swimming pool. The Battersea Power Station gym is set to open in summer 2024 – slightly before the Clapham Junction site.

As a flagship development we often write about Arding & Hobbs – all the previous posts are here. You may also find our wider posts about retail in the Lavender Hill area, or about planning and developments of interest.