The Boulder Garden
Durham, North Carolina
Specs: The Boulder Garden, a new bouldering gym founded and owned by Johnny Davis, is expected to open on December 21st with a “garden solstice” opening event. According to Davis, Durham is “incredibly community [and] family driven.” He found the demographics in the city to be favorable for opening a climbing gym and identified a need for one. “We have a great chain of gyms called Triangle Rock Club here [in North Carolina]. I know the owners, incredible people. They’re doing great work,” he said, noting he hopes The Boulder Garden will fill a gap and reduce commute times in being located downtown. The downtown area also has breweries, restaurants and entertainment options like axe throwing, an arcade and CrossFit, which aligned with Davis’ vision of the gym being nestled in the middle of the activity. He signed the lease on February 29th, 2024, and began construction on May 21st.
Dubbed “the sweet 16,” the chosen spot for the gym was the 16th property Davis had considered, after a year and a half of searching. Davis had been walking in the neighborhood, clearing his head while negotiating the lease for a different property, and stumbled upon what would become the gym’s home. “It was completely dilapidated, old, abandoned, no advertisement on it or anything,” he said. “There are no columns [and] tall ceilings. It’s right in the middle of downtown Durham.” It took Davis hours to track down the landlord but, once he did, the landlord was very interested, he recalled. According to Davis, the landlord had been looking to uplift the building but hadn’t had time to plan for the two-year turnaround, so Davis’ more ambitious 10-month turnaround was favorable. Because the space is 98 years old, the landlord had already started some necessary repairs, such as reestablishing structural support for the ceiling. Concrete floors had been repoured and plumbing was repaired.
Now, the two-story space offers 2,300 square feet of climbing wall surface, including a Tension Board 2 and top-out boulders. “The gym is derived heavily toward getting people access to the outdoors and training safely for the outdoors,” Davis said. “So, getting that practice of actually topping out” was important to the build. The gym also features hangboards, campus rungs, and a free-weight area that will double as a birthday party space on the weekends. The Boulder Garden members will have access to bouldering, yoga, art and horticulture classes, which will include a focus on gardening skills. Fittingly named “The Boulder Garden,” Davis is planning to spread plenty of plants throughout the facility and around the outdoor event space, as well.
Something Davis is excited about is the second purpose of The Boulder Garden: an art gallery. “We’re investing pretty heavily on our walls, not just our climbing walls, but around the space and showcasing local artists, national artists, international artists, in a very modern, abstract, transient style of art that varies quite wildly,” he elaborated. In Durham, Davis said the city has “a couple of great local art galleries,” which he loves to visit “for fun, [and] seeing different artists get inspired.” Some of the pieces of art at the gym will be commissioned, and most will be for sale. “But that’s not the priority,” Davis said. “The priority is showing people the art, getting them excited about and inspired by these pieces.”
Walls: Vertical Solutions
Flooring: Habit
CRM Software: Capitan
Website: www.thebouldergarden.com
Instagram: @TheBoulderGarden
In Their Words: “If I want to share the ideas of the gym, if I come to that conversation from a mindset of ‘I want to tell you about this,’ then I get nothing out of that because I’m just telling somebody information. Whereas if I come from a genuine ‘I want to hear this person’s input or their ideas,’ and try to remove my own bias and my past ideas and past plans, that has completely—I would say, more than probably 200 times—changed the course of this project. At first, I was like, ‘Hey, let me tell you about the gym.’ But now it’s really become: ‘What do you want in this space? What would be cool? What ideas do you have?’ And getting people on site and showing them and letting them get inspired.” – Johnny Davis, Owner and Founder of The Boulder Garden
