The owners of the Windsor Squash & Fitness Club have announced that they'll be retiring from the fitness field this year.
Tom and Marcy Porter have owned the club, located at 2475 McDougall Street, for 30 years.
Porter, a lawyer and former city councillor, says when he was in law school he met someone who had come to Windsor to attend and one of the first questions he asked was where are the squash courts.
"He actually introduced me to the game, and I've been playing it ever since. Which led to me ultimately buying the squash and fitness club."
Back in 1973 the building was built principally as an indoor tennis facility, and when the Porters became owners the tennis side was no longer profitable for the facility so they changed that part into a roller skating rink.
Porter says the roller skating side worked for a number of years, but it ultimately dried up, and at that point he converted that side of the building into the Jackson Park Health Centre.
He says there's been a nice synergy between the health centre and the fitness club side.
"Patients coming out of doctors offices sometimes end up over on our side trying to figure out how they can get healthier and lose a little bit of weight. So that's the current situation, with the medical centre on the one side and the fitness club on the other side. I always say the club side is your preventative medicine, and the club side is your treatment."
Porter says the pandemic was a very difficult time for the club, as it was for gyms across the country, but now they're slowly climbing their way back thanks to some members returning and new members joining.
"We're still not up to the levels of membership that we had before the pandemic though, so we just keep trying. January is usually our busiest month and so far it looks like it's shaping up to be that way this year too."
Porter says they've put out feelers to see if there's any interest, as he and his wife are just looking to retire from the fitness industry because he's still a practicing lawyer in Windsor.
With files from AM800's The Shift