The Laack Block Building has always been more than a cornerstone on Mill Street. For Lee Gentine, it’s a living piece of Plymouth: comic books stacked low along Rexall’s windows, kids perched on stools at the counter, familiar faces passing through a downtown that still feels like it belongs to everyone. So when the building sat dark for years, an emptiness that didn’t match the pride of a busy, mural-filled main street, restoring it became an act of stewardship, not sentiment.
Bring back what matters. Make room for what’s next.
That instinct is woven into Lee’s decades of downtown work: planting trees, uncluttering signage, inviting the Wall Dogs to paint Plymouth’s history in public view. When a fire in 2020 left the building even more fragile, the decision became urgent. By spring and summer of 2024, the Gentine family had acquired both the Laack Block and the neighboring hotel property, and the question turned from should we to what can this become for the people of Plymouth?
Enter Scott and Rev Pop, pulled into the project through a relationship built on trust and a shared refusal to copy-and-paste. From the beginning, the mandate was clear: honor the history without turning it into a museum. Something classic, not retro. Warm, not precious.
That philosophy is shaping everything from identity to interiors, down to the smallest choices that inspire a feeling without overdesigning the room.
The result is the Henry Christopher Hotel: a restoration with a point of view. A name rooted in the building’s origin story. Inside, the experience unfolds in moments: a lobby fireplace that makes you want to linger, The Pharmacy restaurant nodding to the old drugstore rhythms, quiet corners like a tucked-away library, surprising light in the lower level, and a rooftop bar that promises a little mischief.
But Lee is clear about what completes it: not just the finishes, but the welcome. The smile at the door that says, “You’re home here.”
The subtle art of forward movement — one rep, one risk, one reinvention at a time.
I don’t stop moving. Motion’s my baseline. It’s how I think, how I stay steady. If my body’s not going, my mind is. Maybe that’s just how I’m wired: an ADHD brain that only quiets down when everything else is in motion.
Growing up in a multi-faith, multi-racial, immigrant family in Toronto in the ’80s, motion wasn’t a choice; it was survival. Rest didn’t come easy in chaos. I love my family. They did the best they could. But addiction, violence, and poverty were routine. We lived in some of the roughest neighborhoods, and we moved a lot, usually when the rent ran out or the notice came.
Thirteen years, thirteen schools.
Security wasn’t something I could count on, so I learned to stay alert. Instability taught me how to adapt. And to really adapt, you have to seek first to understand—a principle I live by.
I was a curious kid, always taking things apart just to see if I could put them back together: toy cars, old radios, whatever I could get my hands on. Even my own family’s patterns. I figured if I could break things down, I could learn what worked, what didn’t, and maybe build something better, or at least avoid other people’s mistakes.
I’ve never had a drink. Never touched a drug. Not because I think I’m better than anyone; I just saw too much of what it can do. I watched adults party, fight, make destructive choices, then wake up either sorry or unaware. I remember thinking, Why would I ever want that? It just never made sense.
I found refuge in sports. My father and I played tennis and squash, and I picked up hockey in middle school—a late start for a Canadian-born kid. Pretty quickly, sports became more than a break from what was happening at home. They gave me structure, something solid to count on when everything else was out of control.
Coaches became mentors. Teams became surrogate families. I sought out people who were stable. My high school volleyball coach, Dave O’Hare, was one of those people. He was an example of who I could be: a man of faith who didn’t just talk about moral values but lived them. He’d call one of my teammates every morning just to make sure he got to school.
I wouldn’t have gone to college without Dave. On the day applications were due, he pulled me into his office and made me fill one out. He gave me a book, My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. It got me journaling, helped me process how I felt, and set me on a path of self-reflection. Looking back, Dave was my blueprint for integrity, care, and principle—the kind of man I’ve tried to model myself after ever since.
My first full-time job after college was as a janitor: cleaning toilets, stripping floors, doing whatever needed to be done. Eventually, I ran my first fitness center, right across from my old high school in that same tough neighborhood. On my first day, I opened a desk drawer and found my dad’s squash championship plaque from 1987. It stopped me for a second. From cleaning a center to leading one, it felt like a full-circle moment.
I’ve taken some of the lowest-performing gyms and turned them around by doing what I’ve always done: analyze the system, distill it down to its parts, and rebuild it better.
By my mid-thirties, though, I started asking myself, Is this enough?
That question hit harder after hearing Kevin Carroll, the author and former Nike creative, talk about his idea of the “red rubber ball.” For him, it was both literal and symbolic: the thing you chase, the reason you get out of bed in the morning. As someone who grew up around sports, that metaphor stuck with me. It made me wonder what my red rubber ball was—what I was really chasing.
The answer, surprisingly, was medical school.
So I sold my house, cashed in my pension, took out a personal loan my best friend co-signed, and went. I’d never really had to study before, but I’d also never had the chance to focus on school without working. I threw myself into everything: volunteer health clinics, student council, sports leagues.
Medical school taught me I could learn anything. More than that, it proved that I could.
I graduated as valedictorian.
I’m not the smartest person. I’m a hardworking person. If you put in the work, you can get where you want to go. You just have to believe a little more than what’s right in front of you. That’s the difference.
Nearly a decade later, I’m co-founding Kaizen: House of Athletics in Milwaukee.
Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning continuous improvement. House of Athletics—because that’s exactly what it is: a community, a fitness family. Gyms don’t have to feel sterile. People want an experience, a place that feels like home: warm, mid-century, functional.
Watching someone go from point A to point B is amazing. If I can teach our trainers to do that, we can impact an entire community. I still have an old Post-it note that says, “I’m gonna be a doctor.” When you write something down, you’ve already started making it real. Now I walk through Kaizen, and it’s actually happening.
I want Kaizen to help change the fitness industry—to make it deeper, more human, more whole. That’s what keeps me moving forward: listening, learning, breaking things down to build them back better.
That’s kaizen to me.
