New Bouldering Project in Minnesota Features Over 11,000 Square Feet of Bouldering

The entrance to St. Paul Bouldering Project — St. Paul Bouldering Project opened on November 15^th last year and is the chain’s second location in the Twin Cities region. “We’re proud of our welcoming and engaging staff and our routesetting circuit system that is designed for beginners, experts, and everyone in between,” Sean Foster, Regional Manager, said of the new location. (All photos are by Laura Schneider *@lschneiderphoto*, *courtesy of Bouldering Project)*

St. Paul Bouldering Project
St. Paul, Minnesota

Specs: In November 2025, Bouldering Project grew to 13 locations after opening its second Twin Cities gym, in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2011, the chain opened its first gym in Seattle and has since expanded to Austin, Boston, Brooklyn, Washington DC, Salt Lake City and Tempe. The Minneapolis gym, located about 20 minutes away from the new Twin Cities gym, “has become a Minnesota climbing staple” over the past eight years, Regional Director Sean Foster said. “For Twin City climbers, it’s become a key third place since our opening in 2017. On weekends, it draws climbers from Duluth and beyond. We knew we had to evolve and grow with our community and do our best to meet them a little closer to home.”

Foster said Bouldering Project had “been looking for an opportunity in the Twin Cities for years and found the right property with a great landlord,” which allowed them to move forward with the project. The team built out an existing 36,000-square-foot facility with their custom-built climbing walls that are designed and constructed in-house. “The building is great and is in a beautiful up and coming neighborhood near the incredible Harriet Island Regional Park along the Mississippi River, just south of downtown St. Paul and in the Riverview neighborhood of West St. Paul,” Foster detailed. “It has great access by car, bike or foot! You might even be able to paddle there!” There are also plans for a coffee shop in a neighboring building, and “murmurs of a pizza shop and a brewery nearby in the future,” he added.

Climbers bouldering at the new gym — “While we utilize a [general contractor] for much of our general build-out, the heart of our gyms, our walls and floors, are done in-house by this dedicated BP team,” Foster told CBJ. “We have an incredible team of architects and wall builders who work together on every new build.”

The new gym—North America’s largest new bouldering gym of 2025, based on total square feet of climbing—features 11,300 square feet of climbing wall surface, including crack climbing, a Kilter Board, a Tension Board 2, and bouldering walls over 16 feet tall. Foster said the gym was designed to complement the Minneapolis gym, while still incorporating some unique aspects. For example, Foster said the walls in St. Paul “feature more overhanging terrain than our Minneapolis location, allowing climbers a wider variety across our market.” Programming, however, will largely remain the same. The St. Paul gym offers fitness and yoga classes—including a heated yoga studio, which the Minneapolis gym doesn’t have—and a weight room with free weights, cardio machines, racks and more.

To help make these classes more accessible, the operators are working with the nearby Esox House, an apartment building where they have been “engaging with their residents and offering yoga and fitness programming in their facilities,” Foster said. “We are also hosting outdoor yoga classes across the street at Harriet Island Regional Park and inviting Esox House residents, along with local neighbors and existing Bouldering Project members and guests.”

A climbing night at the St. Paul gym — “It’s a labor of love,” Foster said of opening a gym. “No matter the size of your gym or your community, we do this because we love climbing. We love sharing climbing and movement. We love growing communities.”

Walls: Owner/Contractor
Flooring: Owner/Contractor
CRM Software: Approach
Website: boulderingproject.com/stpaul/
Instagram: @MinneapolisBoulderingProject

In Their Words: “As our Minneapolis location continues to thrive, we are excited to have another space to grow our community and create a modern, bright space for climbing, yoga, fitness and coworking. St. Paul is a great option because it is so accessible to a lot of our existing community while being centrally located to include new members and guests!” – Sean Foster, Regional Manager, Central, at Bouldering Project