Madonna's new Mexico City gym gets OK to open

Mexican authorities have given Madonna's fitness club the green light to open after saying the gym was in danger of being shut down because it lacked several permits.

Authorities in the Miguel Hidalgo district, where the gym is located, said Wednesday that the legal representatives of the singer's Hard Candy Fitness had presented all the missing documents and the gym is free to begin operating.

Earlier Wednesday, Demetrio Sodi, Miguel Hidalgo's chief, had said the posh new gym lacked a security plan, a certificate showing it has parking and a land use permit. Sodi said he granted a special permit for the gym's opening ceremony Monday night even though it "didn't have any permits."

Madonna attended the ribbon-cutting and taught a dance class for 20 hand-picked gym members with music by Paul Oakenfold, the DJ who opened her last tour.

Madonna said in a statement last week that she wanted to use Mexico City "as a place to fine-tune our brand and then expand it to other countries and, in the long term, develop a global brand that includes the United States."

Membership at the gym costs about $159 a month. It costs $827 to join and that includes the first two months.

Sodi, a longtime political figure in Mexico, is the uncle of Latin Grammy winner Thalia.