The Bend fitness community is about to lose one of its oldest and most revered health clubs.

Swamped with competition from newly opened health clubs and struggling through a severe economic recession, The Body Shop Fitness and Weight Loss Center will likely close at the end of September, longtime owner Gary Hughes said Thursday.

The southeast Bend fitness club has a close-knit membership of about 1,500, and Hughes and his wife, Laura, who co-owns the club, are trying to call every member personally to tell them of the imminent closure.

“It’s been a pretty good run, but it’s still not easy,” Hughes said.

Those who have already paid in full for the year at The Body Shop will have their memberships honored at the Bend Downtown Athletic Club, which Hughes co-owns with Dave Abramson. And Hughes is hoping other members also will join the smaller downtown facility.

Most of The Body Shop’s 30 part- and full-time employees also will move to the Downtown Athletic Club, though Hughes said about 10 of the employees will be let go.

In the end, it was competition that sunk The Body Shop.

In the mid-1990s, The Body Shop peaked at nearly 2,400 members, Hughes said, and that number hovered between 1,900 and 2,000 members through 2006.

But The Body Shop has lost about 500 members in the past two years as new clubs and studios, both large and small, opened in the area, and recession-weary members dropped fitness clubs altogether to cut expenses, Hughes said.

“There are so many options out there today, and less people than before, that they can walk into almost any facility today and walk right onto a piece of cardio equipment,” said Hughes, adding that he had an offer to sell the club, but thought that it wasn’t the right fit for his members.

“Five years ago, you didn’t do that. As a health club member, you knew that if you were going to work out (during the busiest times of the day), that you were going to sign up for a piece of cardio, go lift weights for a half-hour or 45 minutes, watch your watch and then go back and get on that piece of cardio when it became available again. That’s not the case (today).”

When The Body Shop closes, Bend will lose a health club that has become an institution in more than 25 years of doing business. The Hugheses opened the club in Redmond in 1984 and moved to Bend in 1985.

One member on Thursday sent a bouquet of flowers to the owners of the 19,000-square-foot facility. The attached card read: “I’d follow you anywhere.”

Cricket Kadoch, 39, joined the club more than two years ago. The Bend mother of two had never really been able to stick with a health club before. But thanks to the Hugheses, she said, she found Zumba, an aerobics exercise based on Latin dance moves.

Now, she teaches a class at The Body Shop on Zumba.

On Thursday, Kadoch was emotional about the club closing.

“I’m not only shocked but just crushed really,” Kadoch said. “Gary and Laura have been nothing but positive. They are always there kind of smiling. They are just great people.”

Hughes was emotional Thursday as he thought about the members he has worked with over the past quarter century. Not only has he helped keep them fit, he also has watched their children grow up in the club’s day care facility.

Some of those children are now adults and members of the club themselves.

“I think we really made a difference in this town over the last 25 years,” Hughes said. “I feel very good about what we have done. We’ve been able to do some things that money can’t buy — spend time with kids, watching their intramural sports throughout grade school.”