Life Time athletic club opening at 452 Fifth Ave.

The owners of 425 Fifth Avenue, aka 10 Bryant Park between East 39th and 40th streets, landed another big catch at their tower where Amazon recently signed for 330,000 square feet — and it all started with a game of pickleball.In one of Manhattan’s largest retail-space deals this year, burgeoning “athletic urban country club” Life Time signed for 52,000 square feet on four levels, including in the soon to be vacated, 17,000 square-foot Staples store.It will open in early 2027 behind a prominent Fifth Avenue entrance.The Life Time deal all but completes the leasing picture at the 865,000 address, which consists of three formerly separate structures that include the 10-story Knox Building.Life Time has 180 clubs in the US and Canada.

Chief property development officer Parham Javaheri said 10 Bryant Park checked all the boxes for what he wanted in Midtown.“We want to serve both our residential and commercial cores,” he said.“Although the location is obviously more commercial, there’s a lot of residential growth nearby as well.”Life Time, founded by chairman and CEO Bahram Akradi, has seven other Manhattan locations, two in Brooklyn, and another coming at the supertall Brooklyn Tower condo project.Javaheri said, “We want to grow methodically.

Meaning, we want destinations that let us stay true to what Life Time is, and they require a lot of space.” In fact, several others in the city are even larger than at 10 Bryant Park with 80,000 square feet each.The 10 Bryant Park edition will boast a luxurious, co-ed “wet” suite with steam rooms, saunas, hot tubs and cold plunges; a workout floor with best-in-class cardio and resistance-training equipment;  a recovery space with massage chairs and body-compression technology; and a half-dozen boutique-style studios for group fitness formats. Eli Elefant, CEO of 10 Bryant Park landlord Property & Building Corp., said, “We had the privilege or repositioning the building in a post-Covid world....