USA Climbing Plans to Build a National Training Center. Gym Owners Are Pissed.
In 2022 at the annual Climbing Wall Association (CWA) Summit, USA Climbing’s CEO Marc Norman presented his vision to open a permanent national training center and event space in Salt Lake City, Utah, where a temporary facility already exists. The new space would be big—a projected 25,000 square feet of indoor terrain and 15,000 outdoor—making it ideal for hosting World Cups and other major competitions. The facility would also provide dedicated training spaces for athletes as well public access to sections of the gym. Day passes and memberships would be sold to help offset costs.
The plans must have felt lofty. Or faraway. And although it’s fair to say that they were not a secret, many gym owners—who are key stakeholders of USA Climbing—felt blindsided when USA Climbing secured funding for the training space this past year and things began to be set into motion. It wasn’t long before local and distant gym owners alike began rallying against the plans.
The “spat,” as one news organization referred to it, began with one of the country’s first climbing gyms, The Front Climbing Club, which was established in 1989 and now has three locations across Utah. Unbeknownst to them, the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency (RDA) had granted a property disposition for USA Climbing’s training center in the same year that they approved a $2 million loan for The Front’s expansion of its downtown facility. USA Climbing had furthermore been granted $15 million from the State for construction. The two gyms, which would each represent some of the nation’s biggest climbing facilities, would be mere blocks away from each other.
“We don’t think that USA Climbing as a nonprofit should start to compete with one of its major stakeholders, which is commercial climbing gyms,” Dustin Buckthal, owner and CEO of The Front, told Climbing. “Secondly, USAC hasn’t really proven to be adept at their core competency, and operating costs for a climbing gym, particularly of that size, is pretty complicated. We think they’re unaware of the difficulties of operating a climbing gym.” Buckthal also added that, because the facility would be so close to both The Front and the nearby Bouldering Project, he questions whether it will have the membership base to support the overhead.
“There’s a pretty strong consensus from gym owners that the business side of this just doesn’t make any sense, and USA Climbing is going to bankrupt [themselves].”
USA Climbing began speaking directly with The Front regarding their vision for the facility several years ago. Having hatched plans for the expansion, The Front proposed a partnership, giving USA Climbing the opportunity to collaborate on design. USA Climbing decided not to pursue the idea. “To host National Championships, World Cups, and World Championships at a reduced cost and with the spectator amounts we needed, it just didn’t fit,” says Norman.
On December 10, The Front sent a letter to USA Climbing’s Board of Directors, stating that while they support a permanent training center for the Team, they oppose a commercial facility. Should USA Climbing proceed, “we are suspending our support of USA Climbing events,” the letter stated.
The letter had a snowball effect. Two weeks later, the CWA hosted a video call to give gym owners the opportunity to voice their opinions. A week after that, many of the same participants, representing 22 companies with 75 facilities across the country, signed their names onto another letter to USA Climbing’s Board of Directors, further outlining reasons for their opposition to USA Climbing’s project. Like in The Front’s letter, this petition stated that they’d discontinue hosting USA Climbing events beyond pre-existing commitments.
“USA Climbing doesn’t seem to fully understand the existential crisis they’re facing,” says Jeffery Bowling, creative and business development director of Touchstone Climbing, which has 16 locations across California. “If they move forward on this, there is a strong possibility that in several years there will be lots of gyms which do not have USA Climbing teams.”
As the dispute quickly unfolded, the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency had a response of its own. On January 18, the organization paused the $2 million loan to The Front. Amanda Greenland, communications and outreach manager of the RDA, explained to Climbing, “The RDA was made aware of the concerns that The Front and other commercial climbing gyms had with the National Training Center on December 22, 10 days after the RDA Board granted approval of The Front’s loan request. In our minds, the two projects were never linked and were each evaluated independently of one another. While we are sensitive to The Front’s concerns and of course want them to succeed, representatives have since made statements that are counter to the positive picture of the industry that was painted in their loan application, forcing the RDA to pause and consider the issue further.”
Having already begun construction, The Front is currently in a precarious position. Justin Wyse, The Front’s Chief of Staff, noted that if the loan remains paused, they will be seriously impacted with what they can do with their space.
Discussions of the RDA’s ground lease to USA Climbing were also paused to give the USA Climbing Board of Directors the opportunity to engage with stakeholders and work towards an agreeable solution.
The Vision: A Pipeline for Success
The new facility is meant to serve as a focal point for American comp climbing, the American version of Austria’s Kletterzentrum Innsbruck (KI), which is arguably the world’s most famous gym. KI big and it’s beautiful, with sprawling indoor and outdoor walls. There’s ample space for spectators, and since opening in 2017, the facility has played host to dozens of international events. It houses up to 650 climbers at any given time, and is also the Austrian climbing team’s official performance center. Notably, the facility is government subsidized.
While the American facility will directly impact national team members, Norman hopes its scope will be far more reaching.
“I believe this will elevate the sport and its visibility nationwide,” he says. “Some may believe the facility is for elite athletes, but I also think it is as much for today’s and future youth to aspire to—it is their facility, providing them a facility for major events and a complete pipeline to achieve their dreams.”
As things stand, the plans for the space are to host not only competitions, but also events like youth summer or back-to-school camps and industry-focused courses to educate routesetters and coaches. Spaces open to the public would include training and bouldering terrain, lead, and speed walls, while team athletes would have their own spray walls, training boards, bouldering terrain, locker rooms, and nutrition and recovery spaces.
In their proposal to the RDA, USA Climbing outlined plans to hire 50 to 60 staff members to run the new facility, in addition to three more coaches. USA Climbing is hoping profits from the gym will feed back into the organization’s wider efforts; cumulative net revenue, accounting for 50-percent of the projected savings from events, is an estimated to be $7.28M by year 10.
The Concerns: Money and Transparency
While on the surface the project seemingly only impacts gym owners in Salt Lake City, gym owners around the country feel that USA Climbing is shouldering into their space.
“USA climbing is an organization that we’ve been partnered with for 20 years now,” says Jeffery Bowling. “We’ve hosted their competitions, which are always kind of a money loss for us, in the name of supporting kids climbing and supporting USA Climbing. It’s offensive that they have now decided to become a competitor.”
In their letter to the USA Climbing board, The Front echoed this sentiment, stating that many of the USA Climbing events the gym had hosted were at a loss. Furthermore, since 2018 the gym has provided annual free and reduced memberships to USAC staff and athletes—a $40,000 kickback in 2023 alone.
In an effort to increase accessibility, USA Climbing has stated that it plans to price memberships to be less than that of The Front’s. The Front voiced concern that this will further undercut their business.
“In order to get revenue sources, you have to have a large membership base. And that membership base is going to be directly coming from all of these other climbing gym competitors,” says Wyse. “Mark [Norman] seems to think that USA Climbing opening a commercial gym will create this massive new market that hasn’t previously existed in Salt Lake City. And that’s just false.”
Bowling underlines that the issue is not simply that the new facility could pull away members from gyms like The Front; it’s that they’re getting state funding to do so. “It seems like they’re using their status as the governing body to secure funding for a commercial gym in a way that US commercial providers could never use,” says Bowling.
When I asked him about Kletterzentrum Innsbruck’s subsidies, Bowling said: “The thing about Innsbruck is that all of the gyms in those European countries are government subsidized. Climbing gyms in the US are not government subsidized. We’re not supported by local alpine clubs or the government; we’re all privately owned. And I think that that’s the missing piece in their discussion.”
Adding to the tension is the fact that many gym owners found out about USA Climbing’s plans because of The Front’s letter. Norman admits to Climbing, “we had not made a public announcement, [but] we had been discussing the vision with many stakeholders in the climbing community.” These discussions took place before USA Climbing had secured any funding. “Once we did receive the funding, we received some advice that, in hindsight, I would not have followed.” The advice was not to tell the world about their plans until all or nearly all funding had been secured.
USA Climbing still needs to raise an additional $15 million.
Given the chance, Norman would have done things differently from the start. “All of our stakeholders, especially our gym partners, should have been involved in the development of this transformational project,” he says. “I regret that, and look forward to working with them to hopefully move the project forward.”
Looking Ahead
The RDA has said it is supportive of USA Climbing’s efforts to engage with the community, although their recent pause may put the chosen site location in jeopardy, especially if it drags on.
The Front’s loan likewise remains paused. On January 19, Dustin Buckthal replied to the RDA in a letter, stating his confusion over their decision to pause the loan. “I wish to express our concern that the loan’s status seems unexpectedly linked to our opposition to USA Climbing entering the commercial market, rather than the financial merit and community benefit of our expansion project that was unanimously approved,” he wrote.
Drawing the same connection, several news outlets have called the pause retaliatory. The RDA says it’s just “due diligence,” adding “we are assessing The Front’s loan documents before we move forward.”
Although there is no public forum, USA Climbing has set up a Gym Partner Task Force to begin the process of engaging with gym owners. Since the primary sticking point of USA Climbing’s plans has been the commercial aspect of the facility, Norman admits that they may ultimately roll that back following discussions with stakeholders and the RDA. The decision of how to proceed ultimately lies with the board.
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