bouldering

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You're asking $75K for construction costs only. Where is your business plan? What's your experience with climbing/bouldering gyms?

We had a new Boulder gym open up just recently. It looks to be having great success. Might give you some good ideas. It called The Hive, it's up here in North Vancouver BC Canada. You can google it for pics.

We have a few pretty good gyms, what are you intending to do that is different? Your page mostly just says it will be a gym.

If you want me to contribute you would need much more detail.

Like Daniel said, we have roughly six medium to extra-high quality gyms in the metro area.

From a business standpoint, it seems like kind of a tough market to enter.

Just some food for thought, momentum has a huge gym that opened up about a year ago and the front is about to open a huge new facility next to its original space. I'm all about more places to climb, just know that there's some stiff competition here.

yeah, we have a lot of gyms in the area, could be a hard market to enter. An idea of how to be different would be to add a section of deep water solo, but that would be expensive to build and probably insure. And they just added that to the Olympic park.

the "salt lake area" is bloody huge. any better idea where it's going to be? that'll have critical impact on competition, clientele, and investor potential. further, in your preferred location, what's the real estate climate like? do you intend to rent, retrofit, or build? are there facilities available that meet your needs?

Why Salt Lake? It's a great spot to be sure, but the gym scene here is already quite good, I think you'll struggle to break into this market unless you have big dollars to spend.

frankstoneline wrote:...I think you'll struggle to break into this market unless you have big dollars to spend.

Momentum in Sandy cost $4M to retro-fit and build their gym in an old movie theater.

Marc801 wrote: Momentum in Sandy cost $4M to retro-fit and build their gym in an old movie theater.

eep. really?! it is a pretty big space, i guess.

to be fair, a really quality bouldering club could be built in space the size of the current Front. but i bet just the build labor and materials would run over $100k. not including the holds, inspection costs, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc.

Like others have said, SLC has a bounty of climbing gyms already. You will need to do something different than what already exists.

Things I would like to see;
A soloing wall over a foam pit.
A bouldering wall with crack problems.
A boudering tunnel.
Top out areas would be nice to have a slide or other fun method of getting down.
Please stay away from marking problems with tape.
Open late.
Get the best route setters money can buy.
Tons of new problems every week.
Web cams to check occupancy and/or a real time counter of people in the gym.
Generate other revenue by including an espresso bar, climbing and coffee go hand in hand.

I can't remember where I read this (maybe on MP) but, someone is building an app that would allow members to rate problems. Community ratings would be nice.

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1) build it within 10 minutes of me. i live downtown, essentially. any more than that and i'm going to the Front, Momentum (Millcreek or Sandy), or i'll take a Coleman lantern and headlamp to the canyons. That's how many options i have that are 15-20+ minutes away.

2) be significantly cheaper than the options. see above.

3) make me want to hang around the place. space design will be huge here. long warehouses are good space, but lousy traffic flows, and lousy community.

4) do not be all things to all people

5) do NOT offer kids B-day parties, lock-ins, or climbing teams. those things are fantastic for the kids and i'd have my own in them if i had kids, but i don't want a gym full of kids. i want a gym full of my friends.

6) i do think a "community built" gym is the start of a good business plan, but i'm not going to put effort (beyond what i've just done) into a community build if you're going to put it in Holliday or Orem or Bountiful. 'cuz i don't live there, ya know? "Greater Salt Lake" is a driving time (end to end) of an hour and a half...

ton wrote:5) do NOT offer kids B-day parties, lock-ins, or climbing teams. those things are fantastic for the kids and i'd have my own in them if i had kids, but i don't want a gym full of kids.

You forgot to mention corporate team building events. Unfortunately most gyms depend on all of these to survive financially.

Horrible idea... On every level. Also am I the only one who finds crowd funding this sort of project insulting?