Local brewery Saint Archer, now owned by Miller Coors, had to expand its location due to its growing business. That meant buying out a lease that is pushing historic rock climbing gym, Vertical Hold, out of the place it has called home for nearly 23 years.
The owner of the gym, Ben Zintak, said it has been a rollercoaster after the last few weeks trying to figure out what he was going to do to make sure the local rock climbing community still had a place to go once Vertical Hold's doors were shut.
"They absolutely needed the space. You can see that they are under a lot of pressure to expand and to meet the growth that need to happen," said Zintak.
Vertical Hold sits right in between Saint Archer, which is why the lease was bought out. Zintak said there's no hard feelings about the situation.
"We still have members from Saint Archer, we really appreciated the relationship between a brewery and rock climbing crowd," he said.
"They're a big company, they ship a lot of beer," said Zintak. "So having a little rock climbing gym in the center of their big building wasn't so beneficial for them."
Now, Zintak is happy to say, members of Vertical Hold will continue to get the indoor rock climbing experience.
Zintak sent out an email to members of his gym about the situation going on, and that email just happened to land on the right screen.
The owner Solid Rock Gym, another local rock climbing business, was looking to retire.
He saw the email and got in contact with Zintak.
What started off as sad news for the local business has ended better than Zintak could have ever expected.
Vertical Hold and Solid Rock Gym are now merging, and the rock climbing community will have three more Verical Hold locations to look forward to.
"We went from having no space for our 1,000 members to turning it into a 2,000 member gym in three locations," said Zintak.
All three of Solid Rock Gym's current locations will be renamed Vertical Hold and elements that climbers are used to seeing at Vertical Hold will be moved to the new locations.
