BQE Fitness Center Grows
By Seth Wharton

Health-conscious clients work out on BQE cardiovascular equipment.

The BQE Fitness Center, already the oldest fitness club in western Queens, has its sights set on being the largest and best equipped as well.

To that end, the club is undergoing what will be, according to owners Tom Cavallaro and Frank Zwelsky, a $1 million renovation. The renovation began six months ago and recently entered its second phase, which will be completed in two months. For those who have seen the BQE fitness center, the redesigned club might look like a different place altogether.

While the club already offers a full menu of fitness options, the new BQE will house a cardio movie theater where clients can watch a different movie every night on the large screen, a new café, replacing an older one, tanning and nail salon, a pro shop, extensive equipment changes and a boxing program run by New York state champion Richie Melito.

In essence, Cavallaro and Zwelsky are looking to maximize the club’s 50,000 square feet. With more than an acre of overall coverage, it’s a lot of room in which to grow. "We’re dedicated to the area," Cavallaro says. "That’s why we’re investing here."

BQE Fitness Center owners Frank Zwelsky (l.) and Tom Cavallero pose in the lobby of the extensively renovated club.

The story of the BQE club rings of that devotion. Started in 1979 by then tennis coach Cavallaro and his student Zwelsky, the club was nothing more than four tennis courts, which they converted into 20 racquetball courts. They still have six indoor racquetball courts.

"We chose this site because it was three blocks from the center of New York geographically," Cavallaro says.

That decision still pays dividends. "We get members from Forest Hills and as far as Nassau," he says.

It helped also that there were no other clubs in the area when they opened. Now there are eight fitness clubs.

Rafaela Leyden, BQE sales manager.

Since 1979, BQE has seen every trend in fitness and has grown through many expansions and changes.

In the ’80s they put in a full-scale restaurant and bar, complete with liquor for that post-workout cocktail.

"Nowadays people are more health conscious," Cavallaro says. The restaurant was converted eventually into a free-weight gym, following the trend of increased health consciousness.

As fitness trends evolve, so does the BQE Fitness Club. There are food services available, but now they’re a juice bar with fruit, shakes and wraps.

That kind of increased healthiness is just par for the course at BQE. The club’s Weight Loss Center, which has 500 members, combines diagnostics with nutritional guidance and personal trainers to help work off those pounds. Last year the center worked off 1.3 tons of weight combined for its members.

Services such as the Weight Loss Center will remain intact, while other programs and services will move, marking a shift once again in the importance of areas of fitness.

The third floor of the club is currently divided evenly between weight machines and cardiovascular equipment. The renovated club will house an all-new cardiovascular room downstairs while the top floor will be filled with more weight equipment. It seems only fitting that as cardiovascular health becomes more and more the center of focus for more people that the club brings it all together in one room, closer to the front of the facility.

As Rafaela Leyden, sales manager for the club, explains, the club is not only expanding services geared solely to weight lifting and fitness, but it’s also adding services to take on the whole body. From the tanning and nail salon to the existing massage therapist, the club will also have an therma-beauty center for facials and waxings. The salon will be open to the general public as well.

As the power gym is one of the most popular areas of the gym, where everyone from hulking Goliaths to 98-pound weaklings lift free weights and Hammer strength gear with equal enjoyment, it will remain largely the same. The popularity of the free weights is evident from the three rooms they already occupy.

To go along with the new boxing program, as well as the existing kick-boxing and spinning classes, the club is adding Tai Chi, for that more subdued approach to fitness and wellness.

Trends in fitness have evolved, ebbing and flowing with changing attitudes about the body, its limits and reaches. BQE Fitness Center has seen many of the trends rise and fall, and they seem eager to keep what works and leave behind what does not. The newly renovated gym should prove a bastion of fitness experience brought to fruition.