Climbing Gym Design Continues to Evolve

Paul Steinbach Headshot
[Photo courtesy of Walltopia]
[Photo courtesy of Walltopia]

Climbing gyms are quite literally popping up all over the country — from Manhattan to San Francisco and points between, such as Pittsburgh, Memphis, Milwaukee and Salt Lake City. In Englewood, Colo., just outside of Denver, an old Sports Authority complex has been converted for indoor climbing. In Durham, N.C., a big box built for Walmart and never filled became a commercial climbing destination. "On the renovation side, there's this push toward all the dead strip malls," says Adam Koberna, president of Walltopia USA, a climbing wall manufacturer. "Everyone is popping roofs on the dead retail."

The existing roofs in such established structures may be 20 feet high, less than half the height typically needed for rope climbing, and well short of the 55-foot clearance needed to train for Olympic speed climbing. Some gym developers are raising the roof on a portion of what might be a 30,000-square-foot footprint to make vertical room for the tall walls while flanking them on the floor with bouldering structures. In other cases, they're buying up property, leaving it as is, and opening bouldering-only facilities in relatively short order. "If you do a full-scale gym it takes probably a year," Koberna says of the timeline from purchase to open. "But they can go into a dense urban area and open a bouldering gym in six months. They don't have to pop a roof, they don't have to get a permit, and they're rolling."

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