A leisure group has announced a £1 million investment into one of its health club sites – including a soon-to-be-opened new urban spa complete with childcare facilities.
The new spa at M Club Newcastle has been secretly in the pipelines for the past two years with phase one expected to open at the end of March.
Featuring the likes of a feng shui relaxation area, an innovative salt walls sauna, steam room and foot spas, it will work as an extension to the club’s current onsite spa and has been created in a previous ‘dead space area’.
It will initially be available to the club’s platinum members before opening up to members of the public at a later date.
The urban spa, with phase two set to follow, makes up part of the £1 million figure being pumped into the Newcastle Road site, where a large solar panel installation has already taken place this month.
A planning application is also due to go in soon for a padel facility on the car park, creating a number of courts for the increasingly popular racket sport. It is hoped that will open for the summer, subject to planning.
The investment into M Club Newcastle follows £13 million spent at Waterworld Leisure Resort, which is part of the same group, in recent years where the introduction of energy saving measures such as 1,200 solar panels have led to the resort now generating up to 80 per cent of its electricity demand on site.
A similar number of solar panels have been installed at M Club Newcastle.
The club, which opened in 2013, hopes to ‘open up a new niche’ with the urban spa.
Phase two will see the whole upstairs of the club converted into a place offering spa days with ‘unique’ treatments and feature including relaxing salt baths.
An extension of the club’s onsite Nurture Childcare facility will see it open bookings up to phase two spa users to use whilst visiting. Staffordshire’s first Montessori nursery already cares for 119 children, a number which has grown by 30 per cent over the past two months alone. Staff numbers are also set to increase by 30 per cent from the 18 members people currently employed.
The facility is also undergoing its own expansion with the creation of a forest school.
Company Director Shanie Chaudry-Goodall said: “It is a very exciting time for this club. We have spent a lot of time at the Waterworld Resort having the £13 million expansion there so it is now time to reinvest back in Newcastle.
“There are lots of things we are trying to improve for our members at the moment, but we are also trying to get new members and new tourists to come and visit us daily as well.”
She added: “We are trying to do things differently to local destination spas.
“Our treatments will be different and, on top of that, we will also have the niche of onsite childcare.
“The demand for our onsite Montessori nursery is astronomical. We’ve had to extend three times in the past 18 months because of the number of children that we have.
“We think there is a massive demand for this in the county because there is nothing really like this.
“The idea is to get business tourism in as well as those looking for an urban spa retreat.”
Work on phase two is expected to be started by the last quarter of this year.
