Climbing gyms clamber to new heights

NEW YORK -- "Right foot. You've got to put your right foot on the pink hold." So a young woman coached a friend who was trying to scale a 30-foot wall at the Brooklyn Boulders outpost in Long Island City in Queens on a recent Saturday morning.

"There you go, guy," called another member of the group. "You're almost there. You got it, bro."

Well, not quite. Bro lost his footing, dropped to a padded surface, grinned ruefully and prepared to try again. Elsewhere in the 25,000-square-foot space, a father watched his son and daughter clamber partway up a 19-foot wall, and a fitness instructor led a class that was heavy on push-ups.

Once a niche sport, indoor rock climbing is becoming more and more mainstream, thanks in part to facilities like Brooklyn Boulders, which also has gyms in Chicago and Somerville, Mass. Plans for other locations are on the drawing board, the company's president, Lance Pinn, said.

There were 414 commercial climbing gyms across the country at the end of 2016, up from 388 in 2015, according to data from Climbing Business Journal, a website dedicated to the indoor climbing industry. Most major cities and many smaller ones now have at least one. And climbing will be part of the 2020 Olympics.

But the 16 percent growth that Climbing Business Journal anticipated in 2016 was overly optimistic; expansion did not quite hit 7 percent. Would-be owners have a tough climb of their own: finding and financing real estate with the right dimensions, plus the high cost of building a wall.

On that Saturday at Brooklyn Boulders, a staff member gave an orientation tour to half-dozen first-timers, most of them millennials. She pointed out the cardio room, the yoga studio, the co-working spaces and the walls pocked with molded-plastic grips in many shapes and colors.

Pinn, 32, and two former classmates from Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., were inspired to establish a rock-climbing gym in New York City in 2008 when they were put off by the high costs and limited options around town.

They ended up opening for business in 2009 in a garage in Brooklyn formerly owned by the Daily News. It had a pop-up roof (ideal for their purposes) and 18,000 square feet of space. Success came quickly, as did the decision to expand the gym's offerings to include yoga, Pilates, fitness classes and exercise machines. A day pass is $32; a monthly membership is $135.

Brooklyn Boulders has an average of 1,000 visitors a day in each of its locations, and "90 percent of people will interact with the wall while they're here," Pinn said.

But building one is an enormous undertaking. Thomas Betterton, 33, the majority owner of the Denver Bouldering Club, recalled the reluctance of landlords when, in 2009, he opened the first of his two locations.

"It was hard to get anyone to take us on as tenants, because they didn't know what a bouldering business was," he said. "And trying to get a small-business loan was an uphill battle because this is a nontraditional business."

It is an expensive one, too. "You're talking millions of dollars for the walls -- there's a lot of engineering," said Kevin Goradia, 26, an owner of Crux Climbing Center, a 9-month-old, 22,000-square-foot gym in Austin, Texas.

Pinn has backing from the private equity firm North Castle Partners. "When we were raising money for the first two facilities, we would hear: 'Climbing is a fad. It's going to go out of style,'" he said. "But climbing facilities have been a constant in the U.S. since 1987, and maybe before that."

Owners of rock-climbing facilities are selling a lifestyle as much as a physical challenge, a community as much as a gym, social climbing as much as rock climbing.

"People come for the climbing, but also to be with friends," said Taki Miyamoto, 39, an owner and the general manager of Salt Pump Climbing Co. in Scarborough, Maine. "You can only climb so much, so the atmosphere is important." His 10,000-square-foot gym, which opened in 2015, has exercise and yoga classes and a cafe.

The fitness classes, the yoga rooms and the saunas at Brooklyn Boulders and Salt Pump Climbing are safe havens for the acrophobic. They also are a way for climbing gyms to hedge their bets.

"The older generation of owners just had climbing walls," said Goradia of Crux Climbing Center. "The newer generation is saying, 'We have to add more amenities to bring people in.'"

SundayMonday Business on 03/19/2017

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