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Port Moody gym closure ‘tip of the iceberg’

Owners of the kickboxing fitness gym 9ROUND say its closure is a harbinger of things to come in a fitness industry on the brink of collapse.
Gina and Wade Allen, the owners and operators of 9ROUND kickboxing gyms in Port Moody, Surrey and La
Gina and Wade Allen, the owners and operators of 9ROUND kickboxing gyms in Port Moody, Surrey and Langley, have shuttered their gyms permanently.

A kickboxing gym in Port Moody is one of the latest businesses forced to shut its doors due to the COVID-19 crisis.

It’s a closure the owners say is only the “tip of the iceberg” of a fitness industry on the brink of collapse.

The shuttering of Port Moody’s 9ROUND location, one of three scheduled to shut in the Lower Mainland, was first announced to its members in a detailed letter. 

“We can tell you it has been the most emotionally difficult time of our lives,” wrote Wade and Gina Allen who brought the franchise to B.C. and have owned and operated the three gyms for the last four years.

Part of the decision to shut the gym’s doors stemmed from the same uncertainty every business has been forced to endure throughout the pandemic. But in 9ROUND's case, the pandemic hit at the worst possible moment. 

Normally, the spring months are the gym’s best months, when they bring on most of their new members for the year and make up for the natural attrition rates of slower months. It’s a time when everyone starts working on their beach body and the gym launches an eight- to 12-week challenge to get into shape.

“It all went south quite fast. Everybody’s email started the same way: ‘I hate to do this, but…’” said Allen in an interview with the Tri-City News.

As members lost their jobs or cut expenses not knowing their futures would look like, membership plummeted. By April 1, they had frozen members accounts, both to be fair and as an incentive to prevent people from leaving permanently, despite an attempt at online classes. 

Pre-pandemic, they had a steadily growing membership across all three gyms. But by the middle of May, their membership plummeted to roughly 40%. To make matters worse, their landlords at Newport Village wouldn’t commit to participating in the federal commercial rent relief program known as CERCA, according to Allen.

“They’ve kind of gone dark on me, which is scary,” said Allen.

During normal times, the gym would have 13 or 14 people on the floor by 10 a.m., said Allen, adding that a big part of the popularity of the workout was that you could show up at any time and jump in the nine-round rotation without reserving a time slot. 

“You show up when you want [and] a trainer shows up every three minutes to show them how to kick and punch, and this and that,” said Allen.

It was a high-intensity workout that could adapt to any person’s body size and ability, and most of their members were women between 30 and 35-years-old.

 

But where big-box gyms like Club 16 Trevor Linden or Golds have the ability to space things out, boutique gyms like 9ROUND operates in small commercial spaces with tighter margins, said Allen.

When the provincial guidelines to re-open gyms required a two-metre distance between people while working out, as well as the constant disinfecting of equipment and floor space, they went from being able to work with 18 people at a time down to five. 

“The gyms are just too narrow, especially Port Moody,” said Allen. “High-intensity interval training doesn’t work in a COVID world. That was the writing on the wall.” 

Now Allen is fixing up his resume for the first time in a long time, applying for jobs he says he’s way over-qualified for and hoping for the best. 

“It’s quite a hard pill to swallow. We’ve done nothing wrong. We’ve done everything by the book. We’re solid with the CRA. We’ve never missed a rent payment. We’ve never screwed a member,” he said.

“To have it all disappear? It’s hard.” 

Still, Allen has no plans to jump back into the fitness industry and has dark projections on where it’s all going. Not until there’s a vaccine does he predict people will shake their skittish behaviour in tight, sweaty places like gyms. When that happens, it will be a “gold rush,” or “the Wild West of people returning to gyms.” 

But first, said Allen, “I don’t think we’ve heard even the tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s going to be ugly.”