Downtown Durham is getting a bouldering gym.
The Boulder Garden, slated to open at 328 Roney Street this fall, will have 2,300 square feet of indoor climbing terrain as well as an outdoor gathering space that borders Durham Central Park.
The gym’s opening announcement comes as indoor rock climbing sees an all-time high in the U.S., particularly among members. Durham currently has one climbing gym, a Triangle Rock Club location on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The Triangle Rock Club currently has five locations open across North Carolina and Virginia, including one in northwest Raleigh and a soon-to-open location in the Salvage Yard, which will be the company’s largest gym, at 40,000-square feet.
Boulder Garden owner Johnny Davis says his gym will help flesh out the downtown scene for families and young professionals.
“You have all these apartments going up,” Davis says. “There’s a ton of breweries, there’s a ton of restaurants, and of course, there’s the Durham Bulls and DPAC, but we really need more active use spaces: places where people can just casually walk up and get an exercise in and meet new friends. There are so many folks moving here who are like, ‘How do I meet people? I don’t want to have to get drunk to do that.’”
The Boulder Garden’s climbing area will be cozy, as is the case at most urban gyms, and it will be entirely rope-free, with a variety of different bouldering surfaces including a Kilter board and a top-out section.
“Having top-out functionality basically means that you can heave your body over the top edge of the climbing wall—like a beached whale getting out of a pool,” Davis says. “Probably 60 percent of the outdoor routes that I’ve done in North Carolina require some sort of top out, so it’s helpful to practice that at an indoor gym.”
Davis grew up in Raleigh. He was introduced to rock climbing through NC State’s Outdoor Adventures program while studying engineering at the school. In 2017, when he was still a student, Davis launched a hangboard company called Acorn Climbing that designs training tools to help improve grip strength.
The outdoor green space at the Boulder Garden will not have climbing surfaces, though Davis envisions using the area for classes and climbing simulations as well as for youth programs and events.
The gym will occupy the building that housed the company Durham Brazing and Welding Works for nearly 100 years. In renovating the space, Davis is keeping the original Brazing and Welding sign, which he says has been cleaned up to remove lead paint.
The Boulder Garden will offer walk-in and membership options. Davis says that membership plans will be “competitively” priced, but has not yet disclosed what the fees will be. An exact opening date has not yet been announced.
“We are thrilled to build on an already stellar Durham community and get more people outside in an accessible and safe way,” Davis wrote in a press release.
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