Onelife Fitness plans Hoover club with cold plunge and recovery suite

Onelife Fitness said it will spend $19 million on a 65,000-square-foot flagship in Hoover, Alabama, a move that puts cold plunge and recovery front and center in a mainstream gym build. The club at 5569 Grove Blvd. is slated to open in 2027, with construction expected to begin in October and 100 local jobs tied to the project.

The Hoover site will be Onelife Fitness’s third Birmingham-area location, following McCalla and Lee Branch. Ori Gorfine framed the club as a premium but still accessible destination, and the company is leaning hard into that pitch by pairing training floor space with a recovery stack that would not look out of place in a boutique wellness studio. Onelife says the Hoover club will include an indoor saltwater pool, Reformer Pilates, indoor pickleball, Strike Boxing, a cold plunge, sauna, and a multi-modal Recovery Suite built around red light therapy, HydroMassage, Normatec compression and percussion therapy.

That mix is the real tell. Cold plunge is no longer being sold as a standalone novelty or a hardcore add-on for athletes who already own a tub in the garage. In Hoover, it sits inside a broader member journey that combines lifting, classes, court sports, and recovery under one roof. For a member weighing boutique plunge studios against a home setup, the logic is plain: a single club visit can cover training, post-workout recovery, and social time without buying a tub, hauling ice, or stitching together multiple memberships.

The Alabama rollout also shows how aggressively Onelife is scaling that formula. The company says McCalla is open now and Lee Branch is coming soon, with Lee Branch set for the former AMC Classic Lee Branch 15 theater site. Onelife has said its Alabama clubs typically include indoor saltwater pools, whirlpools, cold plunges, spa-inspired locker rooms, saunas, kids’ clubs, group classes and recovery studios, and it has said it plans at least six health clubs for the Birmingham area.

The Hoover project fits a larger chain strategy as well. Onelife says it has more than 70 locations and about 3.5 million square feet across the East Coast, which makes the $19 million club in Hoover less like a one-off amenity play and more like a blueprint for where recovery is heading in everyday gym design. A cold plunge used to signal a niche wellness spend; in Hoover, it is part of the package.