High Point Climbing acquires Urban Rocks, expands to Birmingham

After heading America’s biggest privately owned nursing home chain in Cleveland, Tenn., and later building another senior care business in Chattanooga, Johnny O’Brien was looking for a new mountain to climb.

A few years ago, the lifelong fitness buff was introduced to rock climbing by a running friend – and his future son-in-law – John Wiygul.

O’Brien immediately liked the challenge of the sport – and saw the business opportunity offered by its growth. The 54-year-old businessman now hopes to use what he learned building and growing two major nursing home chains over the past three decades to build another business with numerous indoor climbing gyms across the Southeast and Midwest.

O’Brien, a former president of Life Care Centers of America and co-founder of Grace Healthcare, says he wants to spend the next 10 years “doing something that it fun.”

O’Brien and Wiygul teamed up to enter the climbing business in 2013 by building what Climbing magazine this spring heralded as “the country’s coolest gym” in America. In the site of the original downtown Tivoli Theater beneath CARTA’s Shuttle North parking garage, the developers built the High Point Fitness and Climbing gym with 30,000 square feet of climbing areas for children and adults, novices and expert climbers.

Next month, High Point plans to buy Urban Rocks Gym on Appling Street in Chattanooga to offer a second local climbing location for its members. Urban Rocks, which was built seven years ago by Chris Gibson and Rebecca Robran, will be renamed High Point Fitness and Climbing Riverside after the sale is completed in early August.

The High Point owners are taking on an even more ambitious project in Birmingham, where they are spending more than $6.5 million to buy, renovate and reopen the abandoned Next Total Fitness on Highway 280 (formerly Sportflex). The revamped 35,000-square-foot facility will feature about 28,000 square feet of climbing area when it reopens and will cater to climbers in one of Alabama’s most affluent areas, Wiygul said.

O’Brien also is looking at projects in other cities where there might be a market for an upscale indoor climbing facility.

But both O’Brien and Wiygul remain competitive in their love of sports. Wiygul has competed in the world championships of the half Ironman seven times, and O’Brien has been among the final competitors 10 times.

“As a competitor, I like the challenge and competition of climbing. It’s a lot of fun,” O’Brien said. “As an industry, climbing is growing very rapidly, and I think is ripe for more development. I like the fact that it’s an early-stage industry with lots of opportunity.”

Popularity of rock gyms grows

The Outdoor Industry Association estimates nearly 7 million Americans participate in some form of climbing, and that share is much higher in places with natural outdoor climbing appeal like Chattanooga. Rock climbing began as an outdoor sport popular among many climbers living out of their van or camping out next to prime boulders or cliffs.

But as the sport has grown and its participants mature, the appeal of indoor rock climbing has grown, and the money participants spend each year is increasing exponentially.

The Climbing Business Journal counts 353 commercial climbing facilities in the U.S., including 29 new gyms built last year. The Journal projects 2015 will see another 15 percent jump in climbing gyms.

“In the past 10 years, we’ve seen an explosion in the number of indoor climbing walls, and that has triggered much more interest in the sport,” said Dan Jeanette, the membership director for the Climbing Wall Association in Boulder, Colo. “More and more people are discovering that climbing is an excellent full-body workout that can be thrilling and provide both a physical and mental challenge to most any participant. It’s not just about how strong you are; it’s also about finding the right route to the top.”

Among the new generation of gyms, High Point Fitness and Climbing in Chattanooga is one of the nation’s most unique climbing facilities with 30,000 square feet of climbing inside and outside.

The facility includes a signature, LED-lighted climbing wall built on the outside of the Shuttle North parking garage. The feature is both a climbing wall and a light display that regularly attracts viewers on Broad Street to watch those making 6-story climbs or the night-time light show.

The $4.4 million High Point facility proved more expensive than initially envisioned. To build one of its walls, workers had to dig a hole more than 50 feet into the subsurface rock beneath the downtown building. The lighted outdoor wall added another $1.8 million, although foundations and River City Co. helped fund much of that cost.

“This is the new generation of gyms being built around the country now that really take this sport and these facilities to a whole new level,” O’Brien said.

When High Point was conceived, Chattanooga already had two rock climbing gyms – Urban Rocks Gym and Tennessee Bouldering Authority. But O’Brien and Wiygul say they were convinced there was a market for a bigger and newer facility located downtown that would attract both locals and visitors. High Point includes a full service gym with a weight room, cycling equipment, lockers and showers so those who want to climb and workout don’t have to necessarily belong to two clubs.

The facility offers personal trainers, children’s climbing camps and a climbing school with clubs and teams run by professional climbers who relocated to Chattanooga from California.

“A lot of soccer moms have become climbers, and we’re seeing a lot of families come here to climb together,” Wiygul said.

On a recent weekday, Ringgold, Ga., father Johnny Hunt was climbing at High Point with his son.

“This is my second time here, and we’ve already fallen in love with a sport that allows us to have a lot of fun together with each of us going at our own pace,” Hunt said during a break from climbing one of the 30-foot walls inside the sprawling High Point.

That appeal, O’Brien says, gave him the confidence to pour more than $2 million of his own money into the downtown climbing facility.

Despite the higher-than-expected initial cost to build the new facility, O’Brien said High Point downtown has exceeded the initial business plan predictions with annual revenues of more than $1.5 million.

“We’ve significantly exceeded our initial revenue projections,” O’Brien said.

High Point benefits by getting business from both locals and visitors to Chattanooga and from its membership of more than 1,300 climbers to its summer schools for children to its day-use and novice climbers.

“We get three times as much revenue from our day-pass users as we do from our members,” Wiygul said. “And a lot of those who try out the sport, find they really like it and keep coming back. That’s our future.”

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.