Barcelona tenders Turó de la Peira gym contract with 4.4 million euros value

Barcelona has opened a new concession for CEM Turó de la Peira in Nou Barris, setting up a five-year contract through 2031 with no renewal option and an estimated business volume of 4.4 million euros. The city wants a manager that can run the Centre Esportiu Municipal at Carrer de Sant Iscle, 40/50, keep it active day to day and preserve the current club timetable, especially for the sports hall and the swimming school.

The financial terms show how tightly Barcelona is trying to balance access and control. The winning bidder must put at least 362,000 euros into improvements over the life of the contract, while the city may contribute up to 235,000 euros a year to keep the operation financially balanced. That public support could total almost 1.2 million euros, although the subsidy can fall if the center performs better than expected. The projected revenue path rises from about 849,000 euros a year to 927,000 euros, and more than 3.2 million euros of the contract’s income is expected to come from users through memberships, sports services and space rentals.

For current and future users, the biggest practical signal is continuity with a clear push for upgrades. The contract keeps the existing hours agreed with clubs and protects core programming, but it also makes the operator responsible for investment rather than simple day-to-day stewardship. In other words, Barcelona is not just renting out a gym contract; it is using procurement to force a neighborhood facility to modernize while staying affordable enough to keep public use broad.

That matters because CEM Turó de la Peira is already one of the city’s showcase municipal sports buildings. Barcelona opened it in 2018 after investing about 10 million euros to replace an old pool and sports court inside the block. The 4,430-square-meter center was designed by Anna Noguera and José Javier Fernández Ponce as a near-zero-energy building, with a heated pool on the ground floor, a multisport court above and a courtyard garden carved out of the interior of the block. Its passive design, skylights, sensors, aerothermal hot-water system, laminated timber, rainwater harvesting and rooftop photovoltaic panels were meant to cover about 90% of the building’s energy needs.

The center’s architecture has already drawn attention beyond Nou Barris. Barcelona says it was shortlisted for the 2022 EU Mies van der Rohe Award, later received the 2019 Premi Ciutat de Barcelona and the 2019 Premi Mapei, and was nominated for the Construmat 2024 awards. Around it, the city is also reshaping Turó de la Peira park, with a remodeling approved in December 2024 for nearly 4.5 million euros. Taken together, the gym tender and the park works point to the same policy line: Barcelona is modernizing public space while keeping a firmer grip on how its municipal fitness network is run.