Earth Treks Climbing Centers will be opening one of the Nation’s largest gyms in the Washington DC metro area next year. ET announced last week that they will be bringing 35,000 square feet of climbing surface to an undisclosed location within the DC beltway. All that climbing and fitness space will be housed in a 45,000 square foot building.
According to the Earth Treks press release announcing the new gym the footprint of the building will be more than 50% bigger than Earth Treks’ Rockville, Maryland location — which was ranked as the 2nd biggest climbing gym in the nation in 2014. Rockville is just outside the DC beltway and is considered by many to be one of the busiest gyms in the country.
Chris Jenkins, ET’s Chief Operating Officer, told CBJ that, “We keep finding, and the industry is finding, that bigger gyms work.” Earth Treks operates four other gyms in Maryland and Colorado, two of which are in the top 15 largest gyms in the US. “We have other big gyms and they are exceedingly busy and full. So the logical conclusion is to go bigger,” Jenkins said.
The large building size was more a result of what was available in the local real estate market than finding the ideal gym size. “I don’t know if we’d go to 45,000 square feet,” Jenkins said in describing the perfect size gym. “But I’m pretty confident that we’ll fill this space pretty quickly,” he added.
Though the location was not specified, ET is expecting that the new location will take considerable pressure off the busy Rockville facility and give their members a better experience. “We have customers that will find it convenient to go to both the new location as well as the Rockville location,” Jenkins said.
Currently the only climbing gym within the DC beltway is Sport Rock’s Alexandria, Virginia facility, which is just south of the District, and will most likely be the strongest competitor for the new Earth Treks facility. Sport Rock also runs a facility in Sterling, Virginia. Despite the close competition it seems ET is counting on the advantage of having multiple locations within the same metro area, which provides a valuable benefit to members. “We think it’s better to share customers with ourselves as opposed to our competitors,” Jenkins told CBJ.
Where Others Have Tried
Gym operators have been looking to get into the lucrative D.C. market for years but have been stymied by high real estate prices and lack of suitable building space. Earth Treks is keeping the exact location of their new facility a secret for now, so it remains to be seen how far District residents will need to travel to get their climbing fix.
By the end of next year D.C. climbers could have multiple new places to climb. Earlier this summer a combination beer garden, bouldering gym and coffee shop was announced to much excitement. The project, a joint venture between a prominent D.C. restaurateur, a real estate investor and Steep Rock Bouldering of New York City, is located in the industrial area of Northeast DC. Alas, no further details have been revealed since the announcement, and the project seems in flux with the original coffee partner recently announcing that they are pulling out of the project.
Residents of the District will have to wait a little longer to see when they will actually get a commercial climbing facility within their fair city. But with major gym operators opening up in dense urban cities like Chicago and New York it seems only a matter of time.
Until then the over 6 million people living in the DC metro area will have to be content with taking the Metro Train to one of the outlying climbing gyms. But as Jenkins said, “We’re not done yet. We do have other things up our sleeves.”
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