The LIV Method Moves Downtown, Cold Plunge and IV Drip in Tow

By Odile Brannock, Wellness Correspondent

The Meatpacking District has spent a quarter century trading carcasses for cocktails. It is now trading cocktails for cold plunges. The latest proof comes from a family-run personal-training studio from the Upper East Side, which has signed for a two-level, 12,028-square-foot space in a 1912 loft building across from a playground, and plans to fill it with trainers, a sauna, massage rooms and an IV drip.

The LIV Method will open at 2 Gansevoort Street, the Sage-owned building also known as 320 West 13th Street, in January, Commercial Observer reported Tuesday. It will be the brand’s third Manhattan studio and, according to Athletech News, its largest. The other two are at 157 East 86th Street, open nearly three years, and on the 14th floor of 7 West 45th Street.

The building is a designated landmark within the Greenwich Village Historic District, Athletech notes, and sits beside Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground. Its office tenants include the artificial-intelligence firm Moloco and the music-streaming service SoundCloud, per Commercial Observer. Machine learning, streaming audio and now a cold plunge, all under one landmarked roof: downtown Manhattan in a sentence.

Very personal training

The LIV Method is not a spin franchise with a playlist and a merch wall. It sells private and semi-private personal training, plus small-group classes capped, according to its website, at 12 people “to ensure personalized attention and form correction.” New clients fill out a form, take an introductory call and are matched with a trainer; the first session is free. The pitch, in the company’s words: “Here, the best of everything isn’t a compromise – it’s a standard.”

The method, per Athletech, centers on injury prevention and performance, built on an individual assessment of each client’s strengths and weaknesses, then strength, cardio and mobility work. The extras are what make it a 2026 sort of gym. The studio’s recovery suite, “Rituals by LIV,” offers infrared sauna, steam, cold plunge and hands-on therapy, and the existing locations also offer IV therapy. Commercial Observer says the Gansevoort studio will have fitness and personal-training floors, a sauna, a cold plunge, massage and IV wellness treatments, with the two levels joined by an open staircase.

“We are creating a luxury environment with beautiful finishes, exceptional hospitality and highly individualized programming, but the experience is designed to feel welcoming and personal,” Matt Sauerhoff, the founder and chief executive, said in a statement to Commercial Observer. “Everyone who walks through our doors should feel that the space was created specifically for them.”

Sauerhoff and Danielle Krinsky, the chief operating officer, put the expansion in neighborly terms in a joint statement to Athletech. “2 Gansevoort is the next neighborhood we call home. We don’t just enter a neighborhood; we become part of its fabric,” they said. “That’s how we think about growth: bringing the LIV Method’s personal approach to a new community and creating an experience rooted in care and long-term well-being.” The company describes itself as family-owned, family-operated and self-funded. In an industry that runs on private equity and franchise fees, that is almost exotic. It says it may eventually expand beyond New York, but has no firm plans.

The landlord’s view

For Sage, the deal is part of a broader idea: that an office building now has to work like a hotel, with amenities to match. “The LIV Method is exactly the type of experience we envisioned bringing to 2 Gansevoort,” said Michael Lenchner, Sage’s executive vice president and director of leasing. “It is a luxury offering that is highly personal, hospitality-driven and focused on the complete experience. For our tenants and members, it adds another exceptional wellness resource to the property.”

Note the word “members.” Landlords no longer have tenants and passersby. They have communities, and communities need somewhere to sweat.

The asking rent and lease term were not disclosed. For context, Commercial Observer cites CBRE data showing average retail asking rents of $333 a square foot in the third quarter around Washington and 14th Streets. That is the kind of number that explains why the cheap gym around the corner closed and the expensive one is moving in. The tenant’s broker, Elliot Dennis of Dennis Healthcare, called LIV “a premium brand, thoughtful and intentional in everything it does,” adding that “it needed a downtown location, physical footprint, and ownership group to match. 2 Gansevoort checked all the boxes.”

The gym as clubhouse

Step back, and the lease is one more data point in a trend this magazine has been tracking. Last week we followed the sauna wars in Tribeca, where the new status symbol is a cold plunge for four. Elsewhere, as we reported, the members clubs are running out of people to exclude. And across town, the plans for the 4,000-apartment tower proposed at 100 Gold Street include a 43,000-square-foot commercial gym open to the public. The gym has become the third place, the clubhouse, the lobby and the doctor’s waiting room rolled into one.

There is something to admire in it. Strength training and mobility work are among the least controversial things a middle-aged New Yorker can do for themselves, and paying a trainer to watch your form is a good deal more defensible than most luxury spending in this zip code. The recovery menu deserves a little more caution. Saunas and cold plunges have their devotees and a growing body of research; IV “wellness” drips, offered all over the city, have far better marketing than evidence for most healthy people, as Harvard Health and the Cleveland Clinic have both cautioned. Anyone getting one should ask who is supervising it and why they need it. That is not a knock on LIV in particular. It is the standing advice for the whole longevity economy.

What the move really shows is where wellness money in Manhattan is heading: away from the anonymous big-box gym and the hype-driven boutique class, and toward small, staffed, high-touch places that feel more like a private practice than a fitness chain. In the Meatpacking District, where the cobblestones once ran with something else entirely, that counts as progress. Doors are scheduled to open in January, just as the city makes its resolutions.

The LIV Method and Dennis Healthcare did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

Photo: 2 Gansevoort Street, seen from Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground, by Tdorante10 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.