Mark Wahlberg wants to take on the longevity-startup crowd with an affordable gym concept

Wahlberg says Municipal aims for that same luxury tier but for a lot less. “We have a better price point than our competitors, and we’re going to get far more results,” he said. For $99, he said as an example, members will receive three rounds of blood work and an hour with a doctor to flag what they’re predisposed to. Supplements and hormone therapy are also “right there.”

When we asked whether the gyms double as storefronts for his other products (he owns a supplements brand), he said “kind of.” What he’s really building, he said, is a “health and wellness ecosystem” with “everything there, soup to nuts.”

He didn’t put a number on how many gyms he wants, but he called the growth strategy “aggressive,” telling us that “landlords and developers who toured the Las Vegas site have offered “AAA locations at very favorable terms, with great TI” (tenant-improvement allowances that help pay for the build-out).

Wahlberg’s record in fitness might scare off someone else. We told him we’d recently watched “Wahl Street,” his reality show, in which an early episode shows him getting deeply involved with the fitness chain F45 in 2019, and that we wanted to warn him about what was coming. “How did you know about the pandemic?” he joked, to laughs from the crowd. He bought into the company, known for its 45-minute classes, at a $450 million valuation. It went public in 2021, then was delisted from the NYSE in 2023 after its stock collapsed. Wahlberg said he learned a lot from the experience.

“I think the biggest takeaway was just making sure that I’m involved with people that share the same approach that I do.” He also said he always thought big box was the better model. F45’s classes suit people who are short on time, but he wants members to hang around Municipal for hours. Plenty of gyms run on a “join up but don’t show up” model, he said, adding: “I can’t understand that philosophy.”

The name Municipal is very intentional and clearly means a lot to Wahlberg, who grew up poor in Boston, one of nine kids, playing on public basketball courts and golf courses. “You learn a lot on the blacktop,” he said. “You learn to win, to lose, to compete, and hopefully to get back up and do it again.”

He has never hidden his rough youth. (He was sentenced to two years for assaults as a teenager and served 45 days.)

In fact, earlier in the afternoon on Thursday, surrounded by friends and business associates in a seating area backstage — this is the man who inspired the show “Entourage” after all — he said he was turned around by two people, including Father Jim Flavin, a Boston-area parish priest who has been in Wahlberg’s life since he was 13.

He wants the gyms to carry that same spirit. “It’s a place to work, but have fun and support each other and create community and really challenge people to be better versions of themselves,” he said. It’s personal, he said outright. “I’ve come from next to nothing to being in an amazing position,” Wahlberg said. “I try to constantly remind myself that I can inspire other people growing up in similar situations, especially inner-city kids and at-risk youth, that there is a way to overcome your circumstances if you’re willing to go out there and do the work.”

At 55, he added, his goals have changed; while he was once focused on looking good, “I just want to feel good when I wake up in the morning,” he said. “I want to be able to conquer all the things that I have planned for the day.”

He also said his plate is exceedingly full right now, between the gym, a film role as Pete Rose, and his daughter’s equestrian career. He’s so eager for the gym to open, he said, that visiting the construction site feels like “literally watching paint dry.” Indeed, asked if he was open to taking on new ventures, he shrugged. “I’m not out there hunting, looking for the next thing for sure.” But he wouldn’t rule it out, he added quickly. “If something amazing were to come along, obviously I wouldn’t turn it down.”