Gym’s Clock Runs Out as Owner Serves Time

VENTURA — Clients of a Ralston Avenue health club were surprised to learn this week that the business has shut down because its owner, a former Ventura County sheriff’s deputy, has been unable to pay the rent while in jail.

Customers who turned up at the nondescript office building that has housed Gold’s Gym since 1992 found its doors locked and a sign indicating the landlord had evicted tenant Darryl Dunn for failure to pay $4,507 in rent since Dec. 1. The gym closed suddenly at noon Monday.

A frustrated Douglas Spoon, 39, a salesman at a nearby printing company, said this was the third time he had a membership at a fitness club in the county that had closed down. Spoon said he paid $225 on April 15 for a yearlong Gold’s Gym membership.

Dunn, who has been in jail since January, continued working at his gym on a jail work-release program and continued signing up new members.

“It’s kind of like buyer beware,” Spoon said, standing outside the darkened club. “He was an ex-sheriff. It’s across the street from the Police Department. I thought I would be safe with this one.”

Ray Cobos, who plunked down $200 for a yearlong membership at the club last week, was also incensed that members received no warning of the closure.

“There was no way he didn’t know about the probability of this closing,” he said as he stood outside the shuttered gym earlier this week.

Paul Grymkowski president of franchising with the Venice-based chain that has 500 locations worldwide, said Wednesday the company has a handshake agreement with the building owner to reopen the club as soon as possible. The company will not refund membership fees, but will honor them when the gym reopens, he said. In the meantime, the fewer than 500 members may use the Gold’s Gym in Santa Barbara.

Grymkowski said that the corporation has severed its ties with Dunn.

Dunn, decorated in 1995 for meritorious police service, is serving 180 days in jail after admitting stealing a $3,500 laptop computer from the Sheriff’s Department and collecting $4,600 by submitting false overtime claims. Prosecutors said Dunn charged for some of the time he spent working at the gym.

The owner of the building that houses the gym filed a lawsuit against Dunn earlier this month seeking more than $25,000 in back rent and unpaid maintenance fees as well as $202 a day in damages. Dunn said he was unaware of the legal action.

“Obviously while I’m in [jail] there are things I can’t take care of,” he said, referring other questions to his attorney.

Dunn is in the county’s work furlough program, which enabled him to continue working at the gym. Dunn is jailed at the work furlough facility near Camarillo Airport when not at work, said Mike L’Ecuyer senior deputy probation officer. Dunn will be released next week.

As part of the work furlough program, inmates pay $10 to $42 a day for room and board and the county subtracts any court-ordered restitution from income earned while an individual is incarcerated, L’Ecuyer said.

Ventura attorney David Follindescribed Dunn as an honorable person who didn’t intend to hurt anyone. Cash-flow problems caused the gym’s closure and even though cut-price memberships were being sold almost until the day it closed there was no intent to defraud, he said.

“At all times there have been negotiations . . . with the landlord regarding trying to keep the gym open and at no time did Darryl have any intent to act in any manner other than ethically and fairly to the gym members,” Follin said. “There was a hope that the closure of the gym would have been delayed, but unfortunately that did not occur.”

But Grymkowski said Gold’s had been concerned about its Ventura location for some time. The company had received complaints from members about its rundown condition. Dunn’s personal problems added to the company’s concern.

“If he’s going to be arrested and convicted for a crime and he’s going to be evicted out of his building, that’s not the type of person we want to be associated with,” he said. “Our main issue is to try and protect the consumer, that’s the bottom line.”