Press Release:
Touchstone Climbing has secured a location for a state of the art indoor climbing gym in Hollywood, California. This will be the 3rd project currently underway in the Greater Los Angeles Area. LA Boulders, Touchstone’s first Southern California location, opened in early 2013.
The Hollywood gym is located near the 101. The gym will be over 17,000 sq ft, making it the largest bouldering-only gym in Southern California. There will be a training and fitness area, along with showers and full locker rooms.
Touchstone announced they had found a location for a Pasadena gym in January. “Now that we’ve been here for 6 months and people can really see what we’re made of, announcing two MORE locations is huge,” said LA Boulders General Manager Remi Moehring. “We’ve set the bar high and people know what we mean when we say a Touchstone gym is coming.”
“Our goal in coming to Los Angeles was not to simply add a gym, which we did with LA.B this year. Our objective is to be a catalyst in the development of an indoor climbing community, said Touchstone Climbing CEO Mark Melvin. “It takes multiple exceptional gyms in close proximity with reciprocity, to do the job right, and this new location is essential. We are very excited to be in the greater Los Angeles area.”
“We are hopeful that we can open both Hollywood and Culver City in the first half of 2015,” said Sr. Manager Markham Connolly. “We will once again be working with our friends at Walltopia to design the walls, and Flashed Climbing to build the state of the art flooring.”
Offering the climbing and fitness community a network of gyms is a pillar of Touchstone’s success in Northern California. “Being able to work in San Francisco, live in Oakland, and visit my family in Sacramento and have a gym everywhere I go is a huge perk to my Touchstone membership,” said member Kimi Fong.
Creating a network of gyms in the LA Basin will not only increase the number of gyms and amount of terrain for the climbing and fitness community, it allows Touchstone to ramp up their infrastructure in the area. “I’m really excited to develop a crew in LA that will bring the Touchstone caliber of route setting to the climbing gym scene,” said Head Touchstone Routesetter Jeremy Ho. “I’ll be hiring full time setting crew that will set at all four locations, bringing our quality and cohesive style to each gym.”
Touchstone is currently working through the permitting process with the cities of Pasadena, Culver City and Hollywood and will have more information come fall.
Climbing Business Journal is an independent news outlet dedicated to covering the indoor climbing industry. Here you will find the latest coverage of climbing industry news, gym developments, industry best practices, risk management, climbing competitions, youth coaching and routesetting. Have an article idea? CBJ loves to hear from readers like you!
