Almost every new residential tower in Melbourne markets a gym, a yoga room and a wellness floor. Walk through those spaces on a Tuesday evening and a decent proportion of them are empty, or occupied by one person on a treadmill. The amenity was built. The usage never arrived.
Quick answer
Residents consistently use wellness amenities that are programmed, scheduled and staffed — group sessions at fixed times, bookable treatment appointments, and events. Unstaffed equipment rooms attract a small, already-active minority. The difference is not the fit-out budget; it is whether anything is actually happening in the space.
Why the equipment room underperforms
An unstaffed gym asks the resident to supply everything except the equipment: the programme, the technique, the motivation and the scheduling decision. People who already have those things use it. People who do not — the majority, and the ones the amenity was arguably built for — walk past it.
There is a second problem specific to build-to-rent and premium strata. Amenity is a leasing and retention argument. A space nobody uses does not generate the resident conversations, the social proof or the renewal sentiment it was underwritten to produce. It becomes a line item that costs money to maintain and returns very little.
What residents actually turn up for
Scheduled group sessions
A fixed time removes the decision. “Tuesday 6:30pm, strength class, level 4” performs very differently to “the gym is open 24 hours”. Two or three sessions a week at consistent times is usually enough to establish a habit across a building.
Format variety matters more than intensity. A building of 200 apartments contains people in their twenties and people in their seventies, and a single high-intensity class self-selects hard. A mix of strength, conditioning such as boxing and HIIT, and lower-intensity mobility work reaches a much wider share of the resident base.
Bookable allied health
This is the most underused lever in Melbourne residential amenity. Residents have necks, backs and shoulders, and a treatment room that hosts myotherapy, remedial massage or physiotherapy appointments on set days solves a problem residents already have rather than one you are hoping they develop.
It also converts a low-utilisation multipurpose room into a revenue-neutral or revenue-positive space, since residents typically pay for their own appointments and can claim on private health.
Personal training on site
A trainer working in the building creates ambient activity. Residents see the space being used, which normalises using it, and the trainer becomes a familiar face who can answer equipment questions in passing. That informal effect is consistently larger than the direct session count would suggest.
Events with a social component
Wellness events pull residents who will never book a class — a Saturday morning session followed by coffee, a health check day, a seasonal challenge. For BTR operators these double as community-building, which is usually a separate line in the operating plan being solved twice.
What tends to sit idle
- Large equipment rooms with no programming. Fit-out spend does not create usage.
- Screen-based virtual class systems. Novelty engagement, then near-zero. They ask the resident to self-start, which is the original problem.
- Highly specialised equipment. One expensive machine that four residents know how to use.
- Rooms with no obvious purpose. A carpeted “wellness room” with nothing scheduled in it becomes storage.
Space you already have is usually enough
A common assumption is that a proper programme needs a proper gym. It does not. A group session needs floor area, some mats and a few portable items. A treatment day needs a private room with a table. Rooftop terraces, function rooms and underused co-working areas all work.
For buildings across South Melbourne, Southbank, Docklands and St Kilda Road, the constraint is almost never square metreage. It is that nobody is responsible for making something happen in the space each week.
Measuring whether it is working
Track a small number of things from the start, or you will be arguing from anecdote at renewal:
- Attendance per session and unique residents per month — the second matters more than the first
- Share of total apartments engaging at least once per quarter
- Amenity satisfaction in your existing resident survey, asked the same way each time
- Whether amenity is mentioned in renewal conversations and exit interviews
Be sceptical of anyone attaching a firm retention percentage to a wellness programme. Renewal decisions are driven by rent, location and life circumstances at least as much as by amenity, and any provider quoting you a precise uplift figure is estimating.
How Complx works with buildings
Complx activates wellness spaces inside Melbourne residential and commercial buildings under a single monthly contract — group fitness, allied health and wellness events, delivered by one team rather than by four separate contractors you have to coordinate.
The integrated structure matters here specifically: if a resident’s back pain comes up in a class, the trainer can point them at a practitioner in the same programme rather than at nothing. That is the same model we run for individuals and for corporate clients, and the principles overlap heavily with what a workplace programme should include.
Frequently asked questions
How many apartments does a building need?
Group sessions generally need six to ten regular attendees to feel worthwhile, which realistically means around 100 apartments or more given typical participation rates. Smaller buildings often do better with scheduled treatment days than with classes.
Who pays — the operator or the resident?
Both models work. Operators commonly fund the group programme as an amenity and let residents pay directly for individual appointments and personal training. That keeps the operator’s cost predictable while widening what is available.
Do we need to fit out a gym first?
No. Programming an existing multipurpose space is usually the better first step, because it tells you what residents actually use before you commit capital to equipment.
What about insurance and compliance?
Any provider operating in your building should hold current public liability and professional indemnity cover, and allied health practitioners should hold the relevant registration or association membership. Ask for documentation before signing.
How long before usage builds?
Expect a slow first month while residents notice it exists. Consistent scheduling and repeated communication through your existing resident channels matter more in that period than the programme content itself.
Activate your wellness space
We can scope a programme against your building’s resident profile and the space you already have.