Over the past six years, Max Poppel and Dan Rose have helped transform Chattanooga’s Southside with a pair of signature businesses that have brought thousands of tourists and locals to what was once a dilapidated block.
But when the developers of the Crash Pad hostel and the Flying Squirrel restaurant moved to Chattanooga from upstate New York in 2005, the two had no plans to even go into business. After graduating from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, Poppel and Rose came to Chattanooga for better rock climbing.
Interior of the Flying Squirrel restaurant“We both had a passion for climbing, and starting a business was the farthest thing from our minds,” Poppel recalls.
Rose initially worked waiting tables at a local restaurant; Poppel sold life insurance and retirement plans, although the piece of the rock he was most interested in was one he could climb on area hills and mountains rather than any insurance product.
But the transplanted Massachusetts residents saw a void in Chattanooga’s burgeoning outdoor sports market: a basecamp for climbers coming to Chattanooga.