Beleaguered health club chain Bally Total Fitness Corp. has struck a deal to unload its chain of Crunch Fitness gyms to private equity shop Angelo Gordon & Co. and fitness industry veteran Marc Tascher for $45 million.
Though Crunch already has 16 clubs in the highly-competitive New York market, Tascher said he thinks there is room for growth in select areas.
Once the deal closes, Tascher told The Post, he will become head of the new company and convert the eight fitness clubs he already owns in New York and Washington D.C. into the Crunch clubs.
Crunch will then have a combined total of 33 facilities in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Miami.
Chicago-based Bally has seen its stock price plummet from over $30 in 2001 to less than $5 amid an Securities and Exchange Commission probeinto its accounting.
The deal comes against the backdrop of pumped-up merger activity in health club sector over the past year.
Tascher and New York- based Angelo Gordon plan to expand Crunch over the next few years in select cities by opening new health clubs and acquiring other businesses.
Tascher is a veteran of the health club industry having co-founded Town Sports International Inc., the parent company of New York Sports Clubs.
Town Sports, now owned by private equity firm Bruckman Rosser Sherril & Co. recently put it up for sale and also filed to raise $173 million in an initial public offering.