Touchstone Climbing announced earlier last week that they have secured a location for a new bouldering gym in Burbank, California.
“We have continued to search for a location to cater to climbers on the east side,” said Touchstone Climbing owner Mark Melvin. “While on the hunt for a rope climbing gym location, we stumbled across this fantastic space for a bouldering gym in the process! It was too good to pass up.”
With 10,000 sq ft of climbing terrain, it will house a weight room, cardio equipment, yoga, and fitness classes. This facility is expected to be their fourth location in the LA area.
San Francisco-based Planet Granite has just announced their second location in Chicago, a mere month after announcing a full-service climbing facility in the city.
From the Planet Granite Blog:
The second site at the Southwest corner of the intersection of N. Sheffield Ave. and W. Diversey Parkway will offer North Chicagoans a huge selection of quality climbing. This satellite bouldering gym is about two miles north of Planet Granite’s location at 1301 N. Kingsbury St.
“Being able to offer a bouldering gym that both complements our flagship location at Kingsbury and operates as a stand-alone facility enables us to better serve the community and provide a ton of variety,” says Stephanie Ko Pound, Sr. Dir. of Marketing. “This bouldering gym will be an amazing facility in a great location, providing additional value to our members by offering a second location in such close range.”
Located by a major metro stop, this expansive bouldering gym will have 24,000 square feet of space in a new custom designed building. The climbing facility will be on the second and third floors above a street level retail and will incorporate tons of windows and balconies to give a three-dimensional feel to the space. That brings the combined size for the PG Chicago sites to nearly 70,000 square feet. Both gyms will include yoga and fitness facilities—the combination is a signature characteristic of Planet Granite.
Planet Granite began with a family of gyms that grew together in the Bay Area, so this model is tested and true. Each gym has its own dedicated expert staffers to coach youth teams, to set routes and to lead yoga and fitness training. The close proximity of the gyms enables our members to climb regularly at a nearby facility but then travel to other facilities for new terrain.
“There is a good community of climbers in the Northwest corridor along Milwaukee and we hope to have an announcement about a third facility there soon,” says Pound. “Our goal is to open a pod of facilities in the Northwest quadrant of Chicago to give a similar variety of climbing as we offer with our three Bay Area facilities.”
The Chicago gyms will be built from scratch with the same focus as other PG gyms: serving the broad community of climbers and yogis by responding to the needs of individual passionate athletes who make up the whole.
The story of Upper Limits climbing gym, on the precipice of opening its fourth location in the midwest later this fall, began back in 1989 when some Army buddies convinced Chris Schmick, co-owner, to go rappelling — even though he wasn’t feeling great after a long night of drinking. “We had our Army boots on … we were the typical idiots,” he recalls. They ran into “some weird looking dudes in tights and all of this shiny gear,” and Schmick discovered climbing. “I fell in love with it that day,” he says.
His story may sound familiar: he went to the outdoor store, bought some “how to rock climb” books and started climbing every weekend. Schmick eventually dropped out of college in Arizona because there was too much good climbing around to go to class. Nevertheless, his path to climbing bum stalled when a bad fall in Red Rocks grounded him.
During his recovery, he worked as a welder and met his soon-to-be wife, Pam, a veterinary technician who gave his cocker spaniel a haircut. In 1994, shortly after they married, their local climbing gym in Peru, Illinois, was put up for sale and they seized the opportunity.
Abandoned Grain Elevator
From the start, “we knew we needed a bigger space and a better location,” says Schmick of the original gym which was located in a converted racquetball court. So they began the search in nearby Bloomington, IL. “We looked and looked…and looked. Since it’s a flat state, it’s easier to sprawl out than go up.”
The Schmick’s were nearly ready to give up on the area when they found some abandoned grain silos, including a 110-foot grain elevator. After securing a bank loan, adding in their life savings and another loan from Chris’ grandmother, the Schmick’s became the proud owners of the silos. Then, the hard work began: three months of cleaning rotted soybeans and scrap metal from the grain storage facility that had been vacant for more than 10 years. Schmick then spent three months building climbing walls and drilling thousands of holes into the concrete silos so that climbing holds could be attached.
After $250,000 and countless amounts of elbow grease, Bloomington opened just in time to host the Junior Competition Climbing Association (JCCA) regional competition on September 2, 1995.
“As a climber, I thought: ‘This is awesome.’ As a business owner now … it freaks me out,” Schmick admits.
Named one of the “Seven of the Most Innovative Gyms in the World” by Smithsonian in January 2016, Upper Limits – Bloomington offers a 110-foot outdoor wall with top-rope and lead routes and a 1,700-square-foot outdoor bouldering area, both lit at night for climbing. Customers can also take an elevator ride to the top of the building and rappel 120-feet off the top. Of the five grain silos, three are round and two are uniquely shaped, featuring stem and chimney type climbs. The main area includes slab, aretes, roofs, dihedrals, cracks, and a wave wall.
The gym got its first claim to fame in December 1995 when Schmick – jonesing for some ice climbing – rigged a sprinkler system to create a frozen waterfall on the outside of one of the silos. A local climber and journalist caught wind of the experiment and wrote a story for her newspaper. The story went viral (the old-fashioned way) and Upper Limits made it into the Chicago Tribune, Paul Harvey, The National Examiner, Good Morning America, and other national news outlets.
Despite the attention, Schmick hasn’t re-created that frozen waterfall.
Silo ice climbing. Photo: Upper Limits
Moving to St. Louis
In 2001, Schmick and his wife began the search for a location in downtown St. Louis, Missouri in part because the city was located closer to Jackson Falls, the crag in southern-Illinois Schmick was helping to develop. Their new location was a departure from the silos, with 34-foot ceilings and 10,000 square feet of climbing surface built by Eldorado Wall Co.
Once St. Louisans had a taste of the climbing spirit, they wanted more. In 2010, the Schmick’s once again began their search for a new location and found it in an industrial warehouse in West County, about 15 miles west of their St. Louis location. The building had just one problem: a 20-foot ceiling. Undaunted, they raised the roof to 45 feet and, this time, contracted with Rockwerx to build 14,000 square feet of climbing. Nearly 1,000 people walked through the doors of the new location on its opening day in 2011.
The Evolving Climber Demographic
In September 2015, Upper Limits invested in a $60,000 upgrade to the West County location by adding a training room called “The Boardroom”, which is open 6 am to midnight. Though it has 40-50 members (who pay an additional fee for access), it hasn’t done as well as Schmick expected. “There’s not a ton of hard climbers here,” he says of the slow growth.
“But, it’s not a disappointment [because] we really built it for the climbing team. We needed to create a space for them, with the added bonus of having this place for hardcore climbers,” Schmick adds.
That doesn’t mean there is a shortage of people wanting to climb, they just look a bit different than the dudes Schmick started climbing with in the late eighties. For instance, the only women you used to see in the gym were the girlfriends of climbers, Schmick says; now it’s almost a 50-50 split.
Schmick says his primary goal is to create a safe environment for people, of all ages, to have fun rock climbing. “I try to get kids, adults …because you never know who’s going to like it,” he says. “We’ve had people who are 50, 60 years old who try it for the first time and fall in love with it. We also have members who are 89 years old. It’s a lifetime sport; it’s not football.”
Kids in the Burbs
Upper Limits newest location in Chesterfield, a suburban community just outside of St. Louis, is scheduled to open September 2016. “It might be the last good location” in St. Louis, Schmick muses. (Downtown St. Louis is also home to the Climb So iLL gym.) “I also said I wouldn’t build another gym after West County — so who knows?” he adds.
The impetus for the Chesterfield gym was a dad on the kids’ climbing team, who suggested, and even scouted the location.
“We weren’t super aggressive about it. It was an opportunity that was too good to turn down. Everything lined up perfectly — except the ceiling wasn’t 40 feet tall,” Schmick says.
The $1.1 million gym sports 24-foot ceilings and will include 7,000 square feet of bouldering, 1,500 square feet of top-rope, and a large “kid-zone.” This time, Walltopia is erecting the walls. “It’s the best price right now,” Schmick explains of their decision.
Located next to a trampoline park, a cheerleading gym, and a karate place, it should do well with the 30-and-under crowd and families with kids, he says.
Targeting the youth market is no accident. The secret sauce for a successful climbing gym is age (kids and young adults) and income level, says Schmick. “I learned a long time ago that climbers don’t pay the bills. Birthday parties and Boy Scouts do.”
Rendering of the kids zone at Upper Limits – Chesterfield
Keeping up with the Joneses
Even though the Schmick’s have been busy with the new Chesterfield location and The Boardroom expansion, they have continued to improve their practices and infrastructure at all of their locations.
Over the past year Upper Limits has upgraded from shredded tire rubber to foam padding for its floors at their downtown and Bloomington locations, and has switched from drag pads to a seamless flooring system in their West County bouldering area.
“It was an expensive year for us!” Schmick says. Upper Limits also began providing its own lead ropes to climbers – an idea that occurred to the Schmick’s after climbing at another gym.
“You do things for years and you don’t think about them,” Schmick says. “It’s just another thing that can go wrong; this way, we inspect them and we know they’re safe.” It probably costs them about $5,000 a year, he acknowledges; both in purchasing the ropes and not selling as many ropes at the pro shops.
“We do everything we possibly can to keep people safe, but it really comes down to people double-checking,” he says. “It comes down to human error and that’s one thing you can’t get rid of.”
Creating a community in a corn field
“If you look at St. Louis now, 15 years later, we’ve probably created thousands and thousands of rock climbers,” Schmick says. “It’s neat seeing kids who learned how to climb in Bloomington – in the middle of a corn field – that are now adults, have kids of their own, and are still rock climbing as a family.”
The Schmick’s also enjoy running into past and present members of the Upper Limits community all over the world. Once, in Maple Canyon, UT, they ran into a climber sporting an Upper Limits competition t-shirt from 15 years earlier.
“It’s cool to have members and friends from all these years, spread out throughout the United States, that got their start at Upper Limits,” says Schmick. “I’ve changed their world and they’ve changed mine.”
Nestled between retail stores surrounding the Haywood Mall and the downtown airport of Greenville, South Carolina, lies The Mountain Goat, a small 5,000 square-foot climbing gym with a big mission: to provide a safe and healthy gym environment for the public while helping break the cycle of systemic poverty affecting at-risk American youth.
Advertised as the only 501(c)3 climbing gym in the US, The Mountain Goat is certainly a unique member of the climbing industry which demands both attention and an explanation.
In brief, while their mission is certainly worthwhile and fosters a positive gym atmosphere, the financial ramifications of operating as a nonprofit gym may prove more restrictive than advantageous in the long run.
Crunching the Numbers
Great Outdoor Adventure Trips (GOAT) – the parent organization of The Mountain Goat – was started in 2008 by executive director Ryan McCrary, who ran the operation entirely from the confines of his own home. After working for an advertising agency during the week, McCrary, along with a few volunteers, would take underprivileged youth rock climbing on the weekends. GOAT grew exponentially after the first summer and eventually added white-water rafting and mountain biking to its repertoire, as well as full-time staff.
In these early stages, McCrary had no intention of opening a climbing gym. Providing outdoor trips for at-risk students was the primary focus, so McCrary filed GOAT as a 501(c)3 nonprofit.
“When we started out and were just taking kids outdoors, it was a logical thing,” says McCrary. “None of the kids that came on the trips were paying anything and our revenues were from donations. When looking at it from that point of view, it made sense. It fit the traditional non-profit model of providing a service to the community and asking donors to support it.”
Outdoor climbing trips with GOAT. Photo: GOAT
As GOAT grew, there was a pressing need for storage and office space. McCrary also wanted a place where all the hard work of transporting kids and tracking down waivers would not go to waste on rainy days, younger children could adventure separate from older peers and all youth could train and climb year round.
In September of 2011, McCrary initiated a crowdfunding campaign to support this project which raised $35,000 of tax-deductible donations when an anonymous donor matched 75% of the money raised. Afterwards, GOAT teamed up with a local contractor to erect the owner-built climbing gym, which officially opened to the public in 2012 as The Mountain Goat.
While becoming a 501(c)3 nonprofit aligned with the original structure of GOAT and may have helped raise initial capital, it has not greatly impacted the way The Mountain Goat manages its climbing gym finances. GOAT acquires regular monthly contributions from its passionate donor base, “The Tribe,” which helps cover the expense of free youth programming and administrative costs associated with these programs. The Mountain Goat simply acts as an additional revenue source for funding the gym.
In fact, since The Mountain Goat charges the public for day passes and memberships in exchange for the service of climbing, all gym revenues are classified as “Unrelated Business Income” and are thus taxed like revenues of any for-profit business. Only donations are tax-exempt, a financial break which may enable expanded GOAT programming at The Mountain Goat but does not affect gym budget lines.
Photo:The Mountain Goat
“That’s the biggest misnomer,” says McCrary. “The true designation as a nonprofit, that name itself is false. You can have a profit, and we actually pay taxes on the revenues from the gym. It’s owned by a nonprofit, but still taxed as a for-profit.”
The 501(c)3 status also bears a burden when it comes to gym growth. Since all profit remains within the company for programming, there is no equity to show big-time investors who can help The Mountain Goat expand its facility and sustainably serve more than an average of 1,000-1,200 kids per year. Some grants may only be available to nonprofits, but according to McCrary, this funding is not as easy to come by as one might think.
As a result, McCrary will be switching the status of the climbing gym to for-profit in the near future. While all earnings will still be directed towards serving at-risk Greenville youth, The Mountain Goat will now be able to generate equity to attract enough investments to support its ever evolving vision.
“There’s really not a ton of financial benefit in the nonprofit model for a climbing gym,” says McCrary. “From the side of serving the kids it’s fine, but we will eventually be spinning the gym into a for-profit in order to raise the capital needed to build a true commercial facility.”
Striking a Balance
Perhaps most important in terms of managing a nonprofit gym is balancing the drive for profit with the larger mission. While the GOAT board maintains executive control of big decisions, day-to-day operations of The Mountain Goat are run by gym manager Cam Hill, who shared a few thoughts on how they maintain a profitable gym atmosphere while serving at-risk youth.
According to Hill, most of the students in GOAT programs are on free or reduced lunch, the majority are black, most or all come from urban contexts and low socioeconomic communities, and many don’t participate in traditional sports. In fact, while the GOAT partners with roughly 40 organizations, about 15% of regular participants are involved in some capacity with the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Pouring holds is just one of many cool activities at The Mountain Goat. Photo: GOAT
Another strong partner is The White Horse Academy, a nearby 90-day residential treatment facility which assists high school boys in overcoming drug problems. To create a stable gym environment for the public while also serving disadvantaged, juvenile and recovering youth, GOAT program participants who climb at The Mountain Goat are provided an in-depth gym orientation which covers safety precautions and basic climbing technique.
“To make sure it’s not hectic or rowdy for gym members and families, the most important thing is intentionality: having a conversation with students in the program which prepares them beforehand,” says Hill.
Taming the Pulpit
The Mountain Goat also exercises intentionality when it comes to religion. While GOAT is a Christian organization, The Mountain Goat is careful to not advertise or impose their beliefs on others. Not all climbers are religious, and some people have had negative experiences with organized religion. So as to not alienate gym patrons, The Mountain Goat does not play overtly Christian music and maintains an atmosphere where new customers would not know the organization was Christian unless they asked.
“People have been hurt by religious organizations, so some people right out of the gate may assume things about us,” says Hill. “We don’t wear it on our sleeve, and we don’t force it onto anyone. We want everyone to feel welcome, loved and appreciated.”
Yes, all employees at The Mountain Goat and GOAT identify as Christian, and many staff at GOAT teach a Christian curriculum to students. Yet the goal of programming is to develop youth as much physically and mentally as spiritually. Only Christian values like love, compassion, grace, mercy, patience, etc. are emphasized by Hill and his staff, values which he identifies as critical to running any business well.
In addition to providing in-depth gym orientations to GOAT program participants and turning down the religious gusto, the Mountain Goat also maintains a regular gym environment by hiring the right staff and training them to handle challenging situations with difficult populations during open gym hours.
“Our staff understands the mission of the organization, and most of the staff know the students,” says Hill. “If they are coming from our GOAT programs, then there is a good chance they will have behavior issues, and our staff is aware of who is in the program and understands their situations.”
For the most part, though, GOAT participants and gym customers climb separately at The Mountain Goat. Program typically runs from 10am to 3pm during the summer, and doors do not open to the public until 4pm on weekdays. Thus, contact between serious crushers and struggling youth is limited.
Paying it Forward
When members do interact with young climbers at The Mountain Goat, according to Hill, the interactions are mostly positive. Since The Mountain Goat is upfront about their mission on their website and during gym orientations, members there understand anyone walking through their doors could have a tough background and are thus friendly towards all climbers, especially when they see staff acting in kind.
Hill compares this phenomenon to the trend of paying for the drink of the person behind you at a fast-food drive-thru or in a Starbucks coffee line. When members see employees engaging with misfit climbers or read a blog article about how volunteers are impacting the lives of inner-city youth outside, they are more likely to act friendly themselves. This cycle of generosity promotes new member retention which, in the long run, should increase the number of youth GOAT can afford to serve.
“Making profit and serving people are not mutually exclusive,” says McCrary. “The better we treat people, the better this place is from the standpoint of serving underprivileged South Carolina youth and making money.”
Remembering the Intangibles
Before making a final decision on whether to start or morph into a nonprofit climbing gym, keep in mind that arguably the most rewarding outcomes of nonprofit gym work cannot be measured in real dollars.
For one, climbing is still a growing sport which has only recently entered the consciousness of mainstream society. The Mountain Goat plays a hands-on role in this development by expanding the availability of climbing to underserved populations who they have found can show the same fervor and potential as other young South Carolina climbers. At a recent open competition at The Mountain Goat, at-risk and minority students from GOAT programs took 3rd place in the Women’s Beginner category, 1st place for Men’s Intermediate and 3rd place for Men’s Intermediate.
For another, youth themselves can develop. The yearlong Mentorship Program of GOAT walks at-risk youth through a 3-step process of Outdoor Trips, Leadership Development and Employment grounded in the core principles of Responsibility and Relationships. Hill recounts the story of one youth who joined this program in 9th grade and had the graduation deck stacked against him. After being mentored by a climber at The Mountain Goat who was in The Air Force, the student graduated from high school and joined the Air Force himself. The parties still interact with one another to this day.
The Mentorship Program not only empowers vulnerable youth to graduate from high school, it also prepares them to become economic agents. GOAT aids youth in financial literacy, prepares youth for job interviews and hires advanced participants to work at The Mountain Goat. They also partner with The Landmark Project in town which makes additional hires in the areas of order placements and screen printing for t-shirts depicting inspirational outdoor places. Several organizations even give car grants for participants to get to and from work.
These successes suggest a nonprofit mission is still valuable, regardless of the monetary value attached to the corresponding tax status. 501(c)3 or not, the mission of The Mountain Goat is still worthy of consideration and admiration.
“There’s a cost benefit to everything you do in life, and a nonprofit changes the dynamic of that,” says Hill. “The biggest difference between a for-profit gym and a nonprofit gym is the mission. Our mission is not to make money. However, making money is a major part of the vehicle which allows us to pursue our mission of serving at-risk youth.”
New York City building inspectors ordered Brooklyn Boulders‘ namesake location to limit the number of people in its facility to no more than 74 people, including staff, at any one time, a Department of Buildings spokesman told DNA Info. Photo: BKB
Brooklyn Boulders owner Lance Pinn said the problem is related to the arrival of a new dialysis center next door.
“We just have a new neighbor sharing the building with us which has required us to separate our sprinkler systems,” Pinn said in an email. “While that’s going on we have to keep the occupancy down for fire safety. Should be taken care of within a matter of weeks and I think we’ll be able to accommodate all our climbers by switching to a reservation system.”
Even though there are no immediate structural dangers to the building, the forced limitation does present huge challenges for BKB members. Climbers currently need to put their names on a wait-list or stand in long lines. The reservation system BKB is using states that customers can reserve a time to climb in the gym but are limited to 1 hour and 45 minutes at a time and can only visit once a day.
In America, climbing gym architecture has never been on the forefront of innovation. The costs of building tens of thousands of square feet of high volume space has forced owners to keep things simple and cheap. Typical ground-up climbing gyms use prefabricated metal or concrete tilt-up construction, and the climbing walls are built inside using their own metal or wood framing to support themselves.
These buildings are very functional and cost effective, but lack almost any sense of style and require the climbing wall to attach to the inside of the building. Essentially, they are constructing a building within a building, and are leaving a large portion of unused space behind the climbing walls.
Philipp Stromer, an architect and climber from Vienna, Austria hopes to change all this with his new style of construction he calls the BOW system. By integrating the building and the climbing walls, he claims he can reduce the cost of construction by 20% over traditional building techniques.
Every time Stromer went to his local climbing gym he would ask, “How would it be possible to combine the climbing walls and the building to a climbable sculpture, instead of treating them as separate parts?” At the firm, Grip Architekten, Stromer and his team developed a way to integrate the wall into the actual structure of the building.
They named it the BOW system, after the way ships are built. “Similar to a ships bow, the ring frames and the skin (facade) of the BOW system combine to a stable structure,” Stromer told CBJ. “We selected this structure because it is an easy and efficient way of setting the base for the indoor and outdoor climbing walls.”
Grip Architeken has yet to build a climbing gym using this method, but Stromer is assured the system is sound. And even though he is based in Austria, he claims he is capable of designing a gym for any customer no matter where they live.
Touchstone Climbing announced early this week that they have begun work on Touchstone Brewing Company, a microbrewery in Sacramento, California. The brewery will be next to Sacramento Pipeworks, and will include a taproom on-site to give their members and guests a place to hang out after a good climbing session or work out. New Touchstone Brewmaster, Ryan Campagna. Photo: Touchstone
“We’ve been talking about building a taproom on the Sacramento Pipeworks property for years,” said Pipeworks General Manager Markham Connolly. “But it always seemed like a pipedream, until we found the right man for the job.”
Touchstone has hired Brewmaster Ryan Campagna to brew and manage Touchstone Brewing Company. “This project was so unique and we knew we had to find someone to champion the effort,” said Touchstone Climbing CEO Mark Melvin. “Ryan has been a part of the Touchstone community for years and we’re excited to share his passion for craft beer and the climbing community.”
As an avid climber and mountaineer, Compagna began climbing at The Studio in San Jose when they opened in 2011. “When I heard that Touchstone had been considering a brewery at Sacramento Pipeworks, I immediately reached out,” said Campagna. “The idea of running my own brewery, next to a climbing gym, 1 hour away from the mountains… it was almost too good to be true.”
Pintworks
Touchstone Brewing Company will be an 1800 sq ft brewery with a 2600 sq ft tap room, along with a shaded outdoor beer garden. The taproom itself, affectionately dubbed Pintworks, will offer beer, beverages and food.
“We’re including a pizza oven in the plans,” said Melvin. “Along with non-alcoholic drinks. While we’re very excited about being the first climbing gym in the USA to brew its own beer, we also want to build a place on-site for the community to come together over food and drinks.”
The brewery will be a 7 BBL system, capable of about 728 barrels of beer per year. In layman’s terms, that’s 180,544 pints.
“I’m planning on brewing a variety of rotating beers, and hoping to get started with eight on tap,” said Campagna. “We’ll have something for everyone!”
“Along with brewing for on-site sales at Pintworks, Touchstone Brewing Company will be creating special batches for events at Touchstone Climbing gyms like TCS competitions and community events,” said Campagna. “We’re also excited to be able to brew for non-profit fundraisers and climbing outreach events.”
When the Monument Sports Group and its insurance partner, The Specialty Insurance Group (SIG), began managing the insurance program of the Climbing Wall Association (CWA) three years ago, some CWA member gyms were left without any coverage whatsoever, according to CWA CEO Bill Zimmerman. “Now I am confident that all of our members have acquired coverage, or at least been afforded the opportunity to acquire quality insurance through our program,” says Zimmerman.
Monument offers General Liability, Umbrella/Excess, and Property insurance which provide excellent coverage, competitive premiums and easy payment options to help climbing gyms, wall builders, flooring companies, hold companies, and any CWA members better manage their businesses. After working hard with insurance companies to expand options for CWA members, here are a few new options Monument recently rolled out.
Affordable Worker’s Compensation
To non-climbers – especially insurance companies – climbing gyms are inherently risky environments, considering routesetters spend multiple hours per day with power tools and buckets of holds at significant heights. All climbing gyms should acquire general liability coverage, but worker’s compensation is mandatory for businesses and regulated by each state based mainly on number of full-time employees. Gym owners must understand that regardless of cost, this insurance is necessary to running their businesses. Luckily, Monument is decreasing the cost of Worker’s Compensation while also providing additional options.
“Climbing scares insurance underwriters because most of them don’t understand the sport,” says Mark Grossman, president of Monument. “Climbing at height is a scary proposition to them, both for employees and patrons, so the biggest part of the process from day one – and the biggest part of the success of our program – was and continues to be explaining the procedures to create a greater understanding of all the risks associated with climbing”.
Just as a climbing gym will differentiate itself in order to offer better prices to a specific climbing clientele, so too does specialization in insurance offer lower prices to qualifying members. That is why Monument fought and won the battle among underwriters to classify climbing gyms as sports facilities – like indoor soccer arenas – rather than places of amusement, often much riskier activities like trampoline palaces. As a result, Monument is now offering an affordable Worker’s Compensation program for the climbing industry. While prices vary by state, all climbing gyms can expect lower prices with Monument than most alternatives.
“When you concentrate in a niche, you are going to be a lot better at it,” says Grossman. “That specialization built on a foundation of better risk management allows for lower pricing in the short and long term.”
Monument was not alone in the battle to solidify climbing as sport in the eyes of the insurance industry. Grossman cites the CWA, as well, as being influential in the early stages. “The CWA staff was instrumental in advocating for the interests of the industry, educating the underwriters, and working with loss control to make sure climbing gyms had a sound insurance program,” says Grossman. Thanks to the CWA and Monument, they now do.
Incentives to Improve Risk Management
In addition to offering a better Worker’s Compensation program, Monument is also pushing forward risk management standards of the climbing industry. By working with insurance carriers to secure credits – or discounts – on key precautionary features, Monument is making it easier for climbing gyms to justify investing into gym risk management.
“Just by the nature of the sport, climbers tend to be very conscious of risk,” says Monument staff member Will Jorgensen. “Gyms are already amenable to changes which increase risk management at their facilities, and we are enabling gyms to make these changes.”
The CWA Climbing Wall Instruction certification program (CWI) which standardizes climbing wall instruction is not old, and already both courses offered by the CWA each year are sold out on a regular basis. Surveillance is becoming the norm at larger commercial facilities, and while Jorgensen estimates about only 30% of gyms they currently work with use defibrillators, he says that number is growing too. Heart attacks are not common in climbing gyms, but Jorgensen says they have happened before and that a defibrillator may have been helpful for such. Fortunately, Monument is negotiating credits on all of these options for members.
Installing precautionary features has a financial benefit as well. If enough gyms raise their standards and underwriters identify a significant decrease in risk, then insurance premiums may decrease across the board for all members. In this way, Monument is transforming the pricing landscape for climbing gym insurance.
“We want to be able to justify the cost of gym owners spending money to better manage risk at their facilities,” says Grossman.”The total cost may not be justified in one or two years, but over time this investment will help lower premiums for the specific gym, and for the industry as a whole. Achieving better claim results by helping our members manage risk now – and into the future – will make everyone’s insurance rates go down.”
Balancing Tradition with Innovation
The goal with development is to add something new without compromising what is already working well. Despite offering new insurance and risk management options, Monument continues its strong tradition of personalized risk management which caters to the specific needs of each gym.
One gym that has certainly benefited from such is Summit Climbing Yoga and Fitness. According to Stan Borodyansky, co-owner of Summit, Monument performed a comprehensive risk assessment of Summit which included a list of possible improvements and personal testing by Monument staff acting as “secret shoppers.” While customer waivers are the norm at commercial climbing gyms, Borodyansky says Monument helped them decrease their liability further by advising introductory orientations be provided and documented as well.
“It seems nowadays the waiver is not enough,” says Borodyansky. “Otherwise people can say, ‘I signed a waiver, but you didn’t teach me right.’” Now, Summit requires customers to complete the orientation every year, and they require employees to review the orientation process and perform such for a manager every quarter so that errors do not slip through the cracks.
Summit also selected attention-grabbing vocabulary for their orientations, removing the word “safe” and reminding new climbers upfront that climbing is always dangerous, despite instruction. “From a liability standpoint, they definitely helped us back ourselves up,” says Borodyansky.
As for innovations, Summit already has surveillance cameras at every angle to capture both climbing and non-climbing related incidents, but Borodyansky does recognize the need for defibrillators and Worker’s Compensation too. Should he pull the trigger on acquiring credits for such, he knows Monument will be ready. “They gave us a good rate, and it also seems like Mark Grossman – despite Monument being a huge company – is always available,” says Borodyansky. “Anytime we need anything they are always there for us.”
Summit is not alone in their appreciation of Monument. Bill Zimmerman, CEO of the CWA, states the following:
“I am very happy we found The Monument Sports Group; moving the program forward has been a huge success and a great benefit to the members. It is great to work with a company that specializes in sports facilities and takes underwriting seriously. I believe the program will thrive with the Monument Sports Group and SIG as CWA partners. The program is in the best position it has been in in a decade.”
This story was paid for and produced by Monument Sports Group with support by the Climbing Business Journal advertising department. The Climbing Business Journal news organization was not involved in the creation of this content.
The Eastern European climbing hold and volume maker, 360, is making the leap across the Atlantic with a new distribution deal with Element Climbing and Rockwerx Canada. Just a few of the 360 holds and volumes available now in the US and Canada. Photo: 360
360 is a Slovenian-based grip maker which started production only a year ago. But in that short time they’ve made quite an impact. They recently made social media headlines with the all-volume route at the new Mesa Rim Climbing Center in San Diego. They have also been making the rounds through some of the most prestigious comps in the world, including the Kranj Lead World Cup, Dutch National competition, Catalonia Boulder Open, Canadian Youth and Open Nationals as well as the European Boulder Championship in Innsbruck.
The new partnership will allow North American routesetters the ability to purchase 360’s mega huge volumes without the added cost of overseas shipping.
