As any gym owner can attest, opening a new climbing gym is a labor of love, and the journey from concept to opening can often be a long one that comes with many roadblocks along the way.
That truth was taken to the extreme for the Cultivate Climbing team in the fall of last year, when their plans to open a new bouldering gym on Foundy Street in Asheville, North Carolina, were disrupted by Hurricane Helene. The storm caused disastrous flooding and damage to the Asheville area and not only halted the bouldering gym project but also shut down Cultivate’s original gym, leaving the community reeling.
But it wasn’t long after the storm had passed before community members were coming together to pick up the pieces and support one another through the aftermath. With the help of gym members, staff, and partners like Walltopia, Cultivate was able to rebound and get back on track, with a revitalized gym that in many ways is better than ever.
Braving the Headwinds, From Strikes to Storms
“I was pulling my hair out,” said Devin deHoll, a co-owner of Cultivate Climbing, about the headwinds facing the Foundy gym project in September last year, before the storm had even arrived. “We had gone through the whole process of building walls with Walltopia. Unfortunately, when they shipped them, they were supposed to land right at the time of a port strike. I was beyond frustrated.”
The Cultivate team was worried the delay from the port strikes would impact the gym’s opening timeline, but in hindsight it turned out to be somewhat of a serendipitous event, in terms of saving the walls from the worst. “Obviously, if they had gotten there a few days earlier, they all would’ve been sitting in that building, and they all would’ve washed down the river. Instead, they were sitting safely on a ship out at sea, away from the impacts of the storm.”
When the storm did sweep across Asheville, both the original Cultivate gym—which was formerly known as Climbmax and has sat beside the French Broad River since 2015—and the new Foundy location were destroyed in the flooding. Fortunately, Walltopia responded with understanding and flexibility at each step of the way, taking care of the logistics for the new bouldering walls, for instance, until Cultivate was ready to restart the Foundy project. “Walltopia literally saved us and worked with us to get us back on our feet. The ship finally landed, they turned the shipping container right back around, stored it for us in Bulgaria until we were ready to go, and then brought it back,” deHoll said.
Annika Zwirn, the Walltopia Project Manager on the Cultivate project, added, “We don’t just build gyms. We help get them open. Our commitment is to the partnership, not just the project.”
Every bit of support went a long way considering neither of Cultivate’s gym properties had flood insurance, since flooding in the area was usually not so extreme. The original gym along the river was built on a hill and supposedly designed to be flood proof, with 10-foot concrete walls above the ground. “Obviously it was not flood proof,” deHoll said. “The flood was so great, it exceeded the concrete bottom story and then poured into the building from the top story and filled it up like it was a glass of water.” The river rose 25 feet above its normal level and left 21 feet of water inside the building. The in-progress Foundy location, for its part, was far away from the river in an area that hadn’t flooded in recent memory. “You can’t even see the river from that building,” deHoll said. But the entire building was destroyed in the flooding as well.
Adapting in a Crisis as “One Big Family”
The community of Asheville dealt with a lot of personal hardships and tragedy during this time, but the loss of the community space of the gym also hit many people hard. “We had over a thousand members in this small Riverside gym, and it was definitely a hub for folks not only for fitness but for community,” said Martin DeFrance, Cultivate’s marketing director. “It helped support a lot of people’s sobriety. And we supported a variety of meetups that were geared around inclusivity. So, it was a safe space for a bunch of people.”
After the storm, people showed how much this space meant to them because a crowd soon arrived to clean up the gym. They brought gloves and just started working, like one big family pitching in to help. “I couldn’t believe the amount of people who showed up,” deHoll said. “And at the time it was really gross. We didn’t have city water in Asheville, so nobody could shower. There was information at the time that the mud was contaminated and was a biohazard. And I can’t tell you how bad French Broad River mud smells when it’s been sitting inside a wet, dark building for a month.”
Another way the community showed up for the gym was by continuing to pay membership dues, even while living through the uncertainty of a natural disaster and when no climbing facility was available to them.
Cultivate responded quickly. Within two months they opened up a unique pop-up location, known as The Bunker. Attached to a co-working space, the facility has a small bouldering area, a weightlifting area, a sauna and cold plunge, a cardio area and more. In addition to providing a new hub for members, it has also helped staff stay employed. “After the storm I realized we needed a place where we can keep our staff on board, where we can keep our members,” deHoll said. “Myself and Cultivate’s other owner, we both took work elsewhere so we could make sure that we weren’t on the payroll. The whole purpose of The Bunker was to pay our staff.”
The Bunker has been a hit. With the destruction of Cultivate’s climbing gyms—the only ones in Asheville—it became the sole spot in town where people could go for commercial climbing, even in a limited capacity. Over the past several months, the footprint of the facility has expanded as its popularity has grown. It is currently around 8,000 square feet and includes a lounge and yoga room.
Coming Back Stronger
Now, more than a full calendar year since the storm, Foundy is set to have its grand opening this weekend, on November 8th. In anticipation of the gym’s opening, Cultivate has gained over 300 members in recent months, proving how excited the community is to once again have a climbing and gathering space. The brand-new bouldering gym is 13,000 square feet and is situated in the River Arts District, very close to downtown. “We want to be Asheville’s gym,” deHoll said. “I felt like a way that we could do that as a gym was to find really cool spaces that could be rehabbed or repurposed.” The new Foundy location fills the space of an old indoor skate park, with an outdoor skate park located next to it.
After about a year of work and legal headache, Cultivate is officially out of the lease for the original riverside Amboy location and will not be reopening. Though many people will be sad to see Asheville’s original gym go away, Cultivate is still working to provide for its members and community: They have another gym slated to open in June in Highland Station. Following the trend of revitalizing old, unused spaces, the gym will be in one of Asheville’s original brewery campuses. After the local brewing scene began to decline, the campus added a disc golf course, a volleyball complex and an outdoor music venue. Now, there will soon be a 20,000-square-foot climbing gym that features Walltopia walls and mostly roped climbing, with a lead section and a 60-degree overhang, a large arch in the middle of the gym, a little bit of bouldering and a kid’s section.
Cultivate’s announcement on Instagram was met with excitement from the community. “Now I’m never going to leave Highland—all my favorite three hobbies in one place!” wrote one follower.
Ultimately, Cultivate’s success of going from zero gyms after Hurricane Helene to three gyms in about a year and a half has been the result of a caring and dedicated community. It all started, in large part, because Foundy’s walls were not lost in the flood. “It was a very, very tough year. But we were able to reset, get some assistance, look internally and, in my opinion, we have grown exponentially from this hardship,” deHoll said. “And that was only because that last thing survived…because we had participation from Walltopia and so many other people were there to help us out.” The soul of this revival work, deHoll added, also came from Cultivate’s outstanding employees Todd Stebbing, Levi Langdon and Brian Hennebry. “I think that this was a barn raising in a lot of ways and it was led with a lot of heart and a lot of passion and care that was unselfish,” deHoll said. “I could have never done this without everyone.”
This article is a sponsored story and does not necessarily represent the views of the Climbing Business Journal editorial team.
