After reading CBJ’s list of Top Cities to Open a Climbing Gym many readers wanted to know where to open a bouldering-only gym. So we put our best researchers on the task and came up with 24 cities that could make an ideal home for a bouldering gym.
While both traditional gyms and bouldering gyms offer climbing to their members, the differences between these two types of facilities is vast. The business plan for a bouldering gym is sufficiently different — from its staffing plan, building requirements and marketing strategy — that bouldering gyms deserve their own list of top cities.
Bouldering gyms are particularly attractive to college age climbers that enjoy the social aspect of climbing as much, or more, than the athletic aspect. Many of these customers are not likely to visit a traditional rope gym where they have to bring a belay parter or climb solo on auto belays.
One of the main benefits to opening a bouldering gym is the lower capital and on-going costs. The start-up costs are significantly lower due to building space, building modification and equipment costs, and once the facility is operational the number of employees needed to supervise climbers, instruct first-time customers and manage parties is much lower. They can also fit into urban areas where 60 foot tall gyms are not allowed by zoning.
Take a look at our list and then start writing that business plan.
Photo: Earth Treks
Jason Kehl is best known for climbing crazy highballs and sending hard projects. Wait, Jason Kehl is best known for his surprising and original climbing holds. No, really he’s known for his entertaining stilt-walking slide shows. OK, it’s really hard to sum up Jason Kehl, but what brings all of his exploits together is creativity.
After 6 months of design work and another 6 months of construction by Walltopia, he can now add climbing wall designer to his resume. With his first foray into wall design at the new Earth Treks climbing center in Golden, Colorado, Kehl is hoping to push the boundaries of what a climbing wall can look like. “We have just scratched the surface. I don’t think there is a limit. The only limit I see is functionality, you could have a really interesting design, but if it doesn’t climb well it defeats the purpose,” said Kehl in an interview with CBJ.
The philosophy of form-meets-function is epitomized in the design of products that must be functional, but may also be beautiful so that the user finds satisfaction or joy in using the product. This is never more apparent than with climbing wall design. Historically climbing walls have been designed more for function than for form, but with this project Kehl wanted to take head on the task of blending these aspects.
Photo: Cryptochild.com
His first decision was not to look at outdoor crags for inspiration, but to look towards art, especially architecture and sculpture. In his recent Dead Point blog, Kehl writes, “Some preliminary image inspiration included cathedrals, long bending metal sculptures, spiraling staircases and archways where it is just as important what you see through the arch throughout different points in the gym. I thought that it was important that this gym was not only functional but visually stunning and purposeful.”
Kehl believes that climbing gyms should not mimic outdoor crags but should be something completely different. “Why recreate rock when you can experiment and have fun with a whole new apparatus,” Kehl said. “Standardization bores me, I wish holds had many textures and materials. I feel the same way about climbing walls, I think they should be abstract as possible, but still follow the simple laws of nature.”
Photo: Earth Treks
Kehl and Chris Warner, President of Earth Treks, bucked another typical starting point for wall design: other climbing gyms. In fact Kehl believes that most gyms do a poor job of making a cohesive, fluid design, and he wanted to avoid this. “The walls all need to work together visually, like in nature everything is connected,” said Kehl.
One gym that did attract notice was the Climbmax in Stuttgart Germany. The German-based gym developer had recently opened their Stuttgart facility and the Earth Treks team saw a few things that they liked. Kehl said, “I saw some pics on Facebook and liked how there were lots of different terrain and stand out features.”
When looking at the Climbmax gym it’s easy to see a few of the similarities in the new ET – Golden facility.
Climbmax on left. Earth Treks on right
Perhaps the most important aspect of Kehl’s design philosophy is maintaining a sense of flow and balance. “If you change one thing, everything connected must also change, one wall becomes steeper, the opposing wall leans with it,” he said.
Kehl makes a distinction between outside climbing, which he finds un-inspiring for design, and natural shapes and forms. When asked about his recurring theme of the pentagon Kehl said, “It is … in nature, in flowers, spider webs and the star, and the 5 sides allow for more tapered angles unlike the 4 sided box. We tried to stay away from having anything too closed or too sharp. Having them recur is just a way to keep everything connected.”
For the Beginners
Kehl and the Earth Treks team also understand that the foundation of any climbing gym are new climbers. They appealed to these climbers by designing two separate teaching areas away from the prying eyes of more experienced climbers. This gives the new climber a safe and comfortable place to learn belay and movement technique.
These walls are not just the typical flat panel climbing wall with some old dusty holds on it. “I feel gyms neglect making the easier terrain interesting and just throw up a vertical wall,” said Kehl. Understanding that even beginners want more than just a boring flat wall, he designed corners, aretes, slabs and even overhangs into the learning area.
Photo: Earth Treks
3-D
In the recent video interview with ClimbingNarc Kehl spoke about the balancing act of creating wide open space with 3-D architectural features. “When I’m outside I like to climb on features, be it an arete or a big roof,” Kehl said. “I was trying to do a lot of different features in the gym so it felt like you were on the edge of something. It wasn’t like ‘oh I’m on a flat wall and this is where I am’. You have this more 3-dimensional feeling to it.”
This culminated in such features as the Death Star and as Kehl describes them on his DPM blog, “The Blade, The Wave and Ships prow in the back are all 3-D stand out features and are massive in size. With The Blade I really wanted to give the climber the feeling there on the edge of a massive boulder. The Coffin Prow is too big to span across and creates 3 separate aretes on this one feature.”
Moving away from expansive flat walls was a theme he took to the rest of the gym. “We were really focused as a group on having individual lines. So we have certain terrain here but then 10 or 20 feet down the wall it’s a lot different so you’re not just climbing the same stuff all the time,” he said.
Now that the gym is open and seems to be a huge success, what is Jason Kehl’s advice to future wall designers? “Work with the space, there should be give and take so everything can work together instead of feeling like an obstruction.”
We may be seeing more walls designed by Kehl in the future. “I love to create and I love climbing, from the tiniest foothold to a gigantic wall, there is still so much to do with design in the climbing industry,” said Kehl.
Dog Patch, Sender One, Brooklyn Boulders, Central Rock.
In 2013 the American climbing gym industry saw a 10% growth rate over the previous year, with a total of 28 new facilities opened. The year started out with 282 commercial climbing gyms* and ended with 310.
Of the 28 new climbing gyms that opened, 13 were bouldering-only (or bouldering-mostly) facilities. The trend towards more bouldering gyms is very exciting for the industry since bouldering gyms can fit into urban areas where a large traditional gym could not. It is often easier for a developer to find a building suited for bouldering, which only requires twenty-foot ceilings, and these building can be much less expensive.
In fact Jeff Bowling, Senior Manager at Touchstone Climbing recently told CBJ, “One of the cool things about bouldering gyms is that they let you get into places that maybe rope gyms can’t.” Touchstone recently opened a bouldering facility called the LA.B in downtown LA.
Bouldering gym developers are still trying to find the perfect model and layout for a modern, American bouldering facility. From what we know about the gyms in development for 2014 we expect even more new bouldering gyms, with some of them likely to find themselves on next year’s list of the top ten biggest gyms in the country!
NEW BOULDERING GYMS of 2013
Wall S.F.
Climb Nashville – East
Nashville, TN
Climbing High
Waynesville, OH
550
Dogpatch Boulders – Touchstone
San Francisco, CA
14,000
Focus Climbing Center
Mesa, AZ
5,000
Iron Palm Bouldering
Asheville, NC
LA.B – Touchstone
Los Angeles, CA
12,000
Midwest Climbing Academy
Minneapolis, MN
6,200
Mine Bouldering Gym
Park City, UT
4,000
Pure Bouldering
Colorado Springs, CO
2,000
Top Out Climbing
Santa Clarita, CA
6,100
Vertical Heaven
Ventura, CA
2,800
Vital Climbing Gym
Bellingham, WA
5,000
Volcanic Rock Gym
Honolulu, HI
2,500
While the new bouldering gym trend deserves attention, it was traditional gyms that stole the spotlight in 2013. For one, these new gyms are trending bigger than gyms in the past; of the fifteen mixed-use climbing gyms that opened this year, two made the list of Top Ten Biggest Gyms.
This year highlighted that multiple locations are becoming the norm, with more than half of 2014’s new climbing gyms representing the second, third or fourth location for their respective gym owners. Central Rock took the bold step to open two gyms in one year, one near Hartford, Connecticut and one in Watertown near Boston, doubling the size of their climbing empire from two to four locations. Touchstone also opened two bouldering facilities this year, the Dogpatch in San Francisco and LA.B in Los Angeles.
In America’s southeast, Triangle Rock Club opened a new 13,000 sq. ft gym in North Raleigh, North Carolina along with a huge expansion of their original facility in Raleigh.
Downtowns and major cities were popular locations to open a new climbing center. The Denver area saw its first major gym development in 20 years with the beautiful new Earth Treks that opened in Golden, Colorado. High Point Climbing in Chattanooga, Tennessee took on the task of opening the largest gym in a downtown with their 28,000 sq. ft. gym. In California, Chris Sharma and his partners opened the highest profile gym of the year, Sender One, in the Los Angles metro. Sender and LA newcomer Touchstone are redefining the LA gym scene with their modern, professionally managed facilities.
Today’s gym developers are also pushing against the accepted conventions. Many are now promoting their fitness and yoga amenities as much as their climbing. Others, like Brooklyn Boulders, are re-imagining indoor climbing as a mixed use facility for promoting fitness, socializing and retail. This year Brooklyn Boulders opened their second location with a 40,000 sq. ft. building near Boston. This new facility boasts yoga and saunas, retail and food spaces, an Active Collaborative Workspace, a fireplace lounge, and, oh yeah, a 25,000 sq. ft climbing wall.
NEW TRADITIONAL CLIMBING GYMS of 2013
Wall S.F.
Brooklyn Boulders – Somerville
Boston, MA
25,000
Central Rock Gym – Glastonbury
Glastonbury, CT
25,000
Central Rock Gym – Watertown
Watertown, MA
28,787
The Cliffs – Long Island City
Queens, NY
30,000
Earth Treks – Golden
Golden, CO
28,350
High Point Climbing
Chattanooga, TN
28,000
inSpire Climbing Center
Houston, TX
17,000
Island Rock Gym
Bainbridge Island, WA
PRG – East Falls
Philadelphia, PA
15,000
Rock Fitness
Wildomar, CA
20,000
Rock On Adventure
Wasilla, AK
7,200
Rock Spot – Peace Dale
Peace Dale, RI
11,500
Sender One
Santa Ana, CA
25,000
Triangle Rock Club – North Raleigh
North Raleigh, NC
13,000
The Wall
Russelville, AR
The Builders
With all this new construction it’s interesting to see which wall builders might also be growing their businesses in America. Rockwerx was this year’s top builder of new traditional gyms, while owner built walls continue to make up the largest share of new bouldering gyms. As bouldering and traditional gyms continue to get bigger, we expect the proportion of owner built walls to fall.
Preliminary data for proposed gyms in 2014 indicate that Walltopia may take the lead as the number one wall manufacturer for commercial climbing gyms in the US next year.
Industry Outlook
Most experts agree that a good industry growth rate is equal to the growth rate of the overall economy. Over the last half century the US GDP average growth rate has been around 3%; for the third quarter of 2013 it reached 4.1%.
So with a 10% growth rate the climbing gym industry is strong and is growing at a sustainable rate. We’re happy to say that we are not in a bubble but instead see a nicely maturing industry with plenty of potential for investment and innovation.
It’s also notable that as far as our research has shown only one gym closed its doors in 2013 (and one in 2012).
One other aspect that cannot be overlooked is the number of existing gyms that have renovated or expanded their facilities. Bend Rock Gym in Bend, Oregon took on one of the largest renovations by constructing a completely new building and essentially tripling their climbing area by connecting it to the existing gym. Hoosier Heights made an impact in the Indianapolis climbing scene by adding 22,000 sq ft of climbing making them the 2nd biggest climbing gym in the US with a total of 33,000 sq .ft. of climbing.
Louie Anderson’s bouldering gym, The Factory, in Orange, California added 2,700 sq. ft. of climbing to total 9,800 sq. ft. with more expansion plans for 2014. Seattle Bouldering Project renovated their basement, adding wall and fitness space to become the country’s largest bouldering-only gym at 21,000 sq ft of climbing.
In addition, Denver Bouldering Club, Tennessee Bouldering Authority, ABC Kids Climbing, Freestone Bouldering, and The Front – SLC all added more bouldering terrain to America’s ever-growing bouldering scene.
How Does Climbing Stack Up?
To help put this all into perspective let’s look to another quickly growing industry: trampoline parks. The International Association of Trampoline Parks (IATP) states on their website, “Today, there are over 160 trampoline parks in existence around the world, with an estimated 50 parks opening over the next twelve months.”
The first tramp park opened in 2004 and the industry has gained media attention, both for their incredible growth rate (31% for 2014) and their notorious accident rates.
Although tramp parks and climbing gyms share numerous similarities — both depend on large customer groups, large buildings (an average of 18,000 sq ft), high capital costs ($1 – $1.5 million) — they are far apart in terms of injury rates and regulation. Which is a good thing.
Tramp park injury rates are close to thirty-five times that of the climbing industry, with Tramp parks receiving 2 injuries per 1,000 visitors versus 2 injuries per 34,356 visits at the climbing gym (according to thesetwo studies). With all these injuries and the inevitable lawsuits that go with them, it will be interesting to see if the surge in trampoline park popularity can withstand the PR nightmare of participants receiving pulled muscles, shattered leg bones, broken necks and at least one death.
It should be noted that the climbing gym growth rate is based purely on the number of new facilities and not on visits or revenue; because of the private nature of business in our sector this information is extremely difficult to obtain. So while we know that more climbing gyms are opening we do not know if the existing gyms are making more money than they were the year before.
One can speculate, however, that if large gym developers like Touchstone, Earth Treks and Stone Summit are expanding their franchises they must be seeing profits from their existing enterprises to warrant (and fund) the investment of additional locations.
This year has been a great year for climbing gyms and next year looks even better. There are already more than thirty commercial climbing gyms planned for 2014 with several more expected to be announced. Over the next few years there may be a rush to get into the top markets before someone else does. This will make for very exciting times ahead for the climbing gym industry.
If we missed your new gym, or if you are planning a new gym or an expansion for 2014 or 2015, drop us a line.
A special thanks to to Jon Lachelt for helping CBJ compile and analyze the data for this report.
* We define “commercial climbing gyms” as for-profit or co-op owned facilities in which indoor climbing is the primary purpose of the facility. We do NOT include private health clubs that have a climbing wall, nor do we count YMCA’s or other non-profit community centers, college, university and primary school walls. These are an interesting component of the indoor climbing community, but are not included in our analysis of the business of indoor climbing.
Photo: Sender One / Tyler Gross
When looking at America’s climbing gym market certain areas of the country stand out more than others. One area that stands out above the rest is the Los Angeles metropolitan region of southern California.
The LA metro area represents the largest and fastest growing climbing gym market in the US. The region has the biggest concentration of people outside of NYC; In 2010 the LA metro area, including Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim, had 12.8 million residents. (The San Diego metro area, about 1.5 hours south, has another 3.1 million people). Luckily for all those SoCal climbers, the region also has the highest concentration of climbing gyms in America with 19 commercial climbing gyms open or in construction and multiple gyms in the works.
New Players Take On Downtown LA
Opening early in 2014 is the Stronghold Climbing Gym. Stronghold will be one of the city’s more iconic climbing facilities after it completes the construction if its new gym inside a historic steam plant located in the Brewery Arts Complex, an artist-in-residence community in the industrial corner of downtown LA. But they won’t have the downtown market to themselves.
Touchstone Climbing, which operates eight gyms in the Bay Area, recently entered the SoCal market with a new bouldering gym in downtown LA called the LA.B. This facility, which opened for business this month, is based on the successful Dog Patch bouldering gym in its eponymous San Francisco neighborhood.
Now that Touchstone has forayed into the LA market, it looks like they are here to stay, and grow. According to Jeff Bowling, Senior Manager at Touchstone Climbing, the company plans to build another 5 to 6 new climbing gyms in LA over the next five years. “The arts district we think is ideal. It’s an up and coming neighborhood, there is a lot of young people, a lot of artists, its a vibrant scene, there’s a lot happening,” said Bowling. “It reminded us a lot of the what the Mission looked like ten years ago, and similar to what the Dogpatch is right now.”
Touchstone hopes to replicate the success they have had in SF by building a number of gyms around LA’s downtown area. “Especially around downtown we think there is a lack of really good rope climbing gyms,” said Bowling. “We are excited about the downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods. That’s where our focus is going to be; it’s going to be downtown and Hollywood, Silver Lake, those kind of areas.”
Stronghold
Local Players Look to Multiply
Boulderdash Indoor Rock Climbing Gym, which is located on the outskirst of LA in Thousand Oaks (about forty miles northwest of downtown, and close to an hour in good traffic), is also looking to add a few more gyms to the area. Paul Farkas, co-owner of Boulderdash, told CBJ “We have been planning on opening another gym(s) for quite some time but have not been able to close any deals for various reasons.” But 2014 could be the year that changes.
There is also Chris Sharma’s new gym, Sender One, which was the highest profile gym to open in 2013. Their 25,000 square foot facility in Santa Ana is considered by many locals to be the best gym to ever open in LA. The gym’s almost instant popularity is not a surprise, and perhaps their plans for expansion shouldn’t be either.
“From the beginning, a key tenet of our business plan has been to grow quickly and expand to multiple locations. To that end, Sender One is currently finalizing an agreement for a building in the Los Angeles area. Until it is final, we can’t say exactly where the building is located. But in general, Sender One is always on the lookout for potential expansion sites, particularly in Southern California. Socal is our home, it’s our community, it’s where we are most comfortable,” said Wesley Shih, Partner and General Counsel of Sender One.
When talking about the LA gym market we can’t forget to mention Hanger 18, which is currently tied with Vertical Endeavors as the second-largest gym developer in the country with 5 facilities (behind Touchstone’s 9 facilities). Their development philosophy has mostly entailed buying up small and floundering gyms in the LA area; of their five locations three were purchased from the gym’s original owners. But it seems likely that if they want to keep growing they will turn to developing their own new facilities.
Down in San Diego, the 4th largest climbing gym in the country, Mesa Rim, is also looking into its options. “The vitality of our growing community has proven that a second location will be viable in 2015 and our planning and site selection is well underway,” said Ian McIntosh, co-owner and General Manager of Mesa Rim.
Looking Ahead
All this new development will not come without some tears shed. In our next installment of our series on the SoCal market we will delve into what could happen to LA’s oldest climbing gyms as new facilities come rushing in.
