Fall climbing gym roundup

After a slow summer, November is shaping up to be a very busy month for climbing gyms around the country. Gyms from coast to coast are opening their doors for the winter crush while others have announced their ground breaking for 2016.

Gym development is on track to break last years growth rate (full report coming at year’s end), with several major developers announcing plans for new facilities including Momentum’s foray into the Houston, Texas market and Earth Treks’ new DC project. But there are numerous other companies expanding or opening for the first time this month. Here’s a quick look at what’s happening this month in gym development news.

North Carolina

Charlotte-based Inner Peaks is about to open the doors on their second facility at the end of the month. The $3 million dollar facility will feature 15,000 sf of Walltopia-built climbing walls as well as “a traditional fitness center, yoga, group exercise and retail and social spaces,” the Bizjournals reported.

Inner Peaks, which first opened in 1998, is owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Doug Cosby and Page Lee. “Everything I ever needed to be an entrepreneur, I learned from climbing,” Lee said citing risk management, tenacity accountability and commitment as examples.

Inner Peaks – South End is expected to open by the end of November.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in North Carolina, brothers Kris and Keith Johnson released images of their new climbing facility called Cliffhangers last week. Located in Mooresville, NC, the 20,000 sf building will house 18,000 sf of Rockwerx climbing walls.

The plans, according to Charlotte Business Journal, call for a three-story building that will incorporate indoor and outdoor climbing surfaces as well as a children’s climbing section. The design includes 50-foot climbing walls, 3,500 square feet of top-out bouldering, rope and lead climbing and rappelling.

Texas

Down near the Big D, Summit Climbing just opened their fourth location in Denton, a suburb of Dallas. While the Denton gym will be one of Summit’s smaller facilities, co-owner, Stan Borodyansky said the company has optimized the space by focusing on bouldering. According to the the Denton Record – Chronicle, the gym includes “15-foot competition-grade climbing walls and houses a separate yoga studio.”

After opening the first Summit gym in Grapevine in 2009 with his fellow co-owners, Chris LoCrasto and Kyle Clinkscales, Borodyansky said the business now has more than 100 employees.

Also happening in Texas is the long awaited opening of the Austin Bouldering Project. A spin off of the Seattle Bouldering Project, the building itself is expected to clock in around 46,000 square feet and most likely will be the largest bouldering-only facility in the country. The ABP is expected to open their doors by the end of the month.

Austin is also about to see ground broken on The Crux Climbing Center.

California

In San Diego last week, Mesa Rim Climbing opened the doors on to their 27,000 square feet of Entre Prises-built climbing walls. The full amenity facility features 50 foot walls, climber training, yoga and fitness space.

Mesa Rim spared no expense during the set up of the new facility. They flew in 6 national level routesetters for a week to help set the opening set of routes and boulders (Full disclosure: CBJ Editor-in-Chief, Mike Helt was hired as one of those setters). But it was Mesa Rim’s very own setters that crashed the Internet with their all volume mega route.

Minnesota

Vertical Endeavors, which operates the largest climbing gym in the US is reported to be a part of a large redevelopment plan in an industrial area of Bloomington, a southern suburb of Minneapolis.

Plans call for tearing down a former food packaging facility, but keeping space for a 19,000-square-foot rock climbing facility, 14,600 square feet of office space and 25,300 square feet of warehouse space.

Montana

In Helena, Stone Tree Climbing opened their doors on the first commercial climbing facility in the capital city.

The Independent Record reports:

Before the gym was opened, there wasn’t a gathering place for climbers in Helena. People would meet while climbing routes outside of town or when buying gear, but there wasn’t much of a climbing network or place for people to gathe.r

Families, Barbara and Tim Wetherill and Zach and Tiffany Bushilla received a helping hand in the form of a tax abatement from the city and the county.

The Independent Record reports:

Giving new purpose to the empty building, which formerly housed cylinders of compressed gas before being vacant for at least a couple of years, earned praise from city commissioners Andres Haladay and Katherine Haque-Hausrath.
Exactly how much the two families may save on the business’s property tax bill will depend on how the property is valued after the work is completed. The state Department of Revenue is responsible for assessing the property that then allows the county to determine the increased tax bill.
One provision of state law offers property tax breaks if the value of the taxes increases by 2.5 percent or more while a more generous tax break comes for improvements that increase a tax bill by 5 percent or more.

Currently the gym is operated like a bouldering gym but the owners said there’s space behind the existing building to expand out and also upwards for roped climbing if the business does well.