A big flat city is starting its climb
Momentum’s huge bouldering gym opens in the Washington Arts District
Joey Luna slipped on climbing shoes, rubbed white chalk on his hands and scaled the bouldering wall. He gripped the multicolored rock holds, reminiscent of Skittles scattered across a gray slab, as he made his way up several feet before dropping down onto an 18-inch foam pad.
The Houston transplant started climbing a decade ago on the red-rock mountains of Colorado. When he moved to the flatlands of the Bayou City, the Heights resident turned to a handful of smaller rockclimbing gyms in the suburbs to get his fix.
With the opening of Momentum Indoor Climbing’s massive bouldering gym in the Washington Arts District,
Luna won’t have to drive more than a couple of minutes to get to Houston’s first indoor climbing gym inside the Loop.
“I’ve been waiting for this with bated breath,” said Luna, general manager of Momentum’s new gym, which will hold a grand opening Nov. 18.
Momentum executives are the first to admit Houston, with its flat topography, isn’t particularly conducive to cultivating a climbing culture. Nevertheless, the Salt Lake City-based climbing company sees Houston as an underserved market with potential for its climbing community to grow.
As more millennials move to the city, Momentum believes it could serve more than 5,000 climbers in the Houston area.
“Climbing has really blossomed in the last 10 years, and people are realizing it’s not some kind of crazy thrill-seeking sport, but a real pleasurable, functional fitness activity,” Noah Bigwood of Momentum said. “Very few other sports captivate people’s imaginations like climbing does.”
Momentum earlier this year opened its first Houston-area location, a 37,000-square-foot ropeclimbing gym in Katy. More than 1,000 climbers, from ages 3 to 50, are members.
It took more than two years for Momentum to find its second location within an industrial property on Silver Street. CEO Jeff Pedersen said he looked at buildings across Austin, Dallas and Houston before settling on a former Silver Eagle beer distribution center nestled among up-and-coming restaurants, breweries and art galleries in Sawyer Yards, being developed by Steve Gibson, Jon Deal and Frank Liu.
“Finding this building was kind of a miracle, since we’re not the first use for an industrial landlord,” Pedersen said. “They have to get their mind around it and really see the vision we have for the space.”
Land to develop new gyms inside the Loop has become more expensive and difficult to find as Houston’s urban population has boomed in recent years. That’s why many fitness companies, like CrossFit and Momentum, are seeking former industrial buildings to redevelop into gyms, said Ben Brown, a retail broker with Houston-based Baker Katz.
“What these guys want to create is that ‘it’ factor,” Brown said. “Retrofitting an old industrial space fits that.”
Leasing a 43,000-squarefoot white metal warehouse with no columns provided Momentum a chance to design one of the largest stateof-the-art climbing gyms in the nation, Pedersen said.
Momentum retrofitted the warehouse’s truck-bay doors with glass windows, giving climbers a view of the downtown skyline. Crews installed skylights to let in more natural light. The geometric climbing structures were shipped from a Bulgarian supplier.
Climbers can scale 8to 15-foot-tall routes with names like “Hummingbird” and “Geoboulder” without a rope. Along one side of the gym, novices can hone their grip and upper body strength on several training walls.
A mezzanine level overlooking the entire gym offers table-seating areas where members can work on their laptops or socialize between climbs.
Downstairs, an REI CoOp Climb store sells climbing gear, like shoes, ropes and chalk bags. A special collaboration with the outdoor retailer offers Momentum members climbing lessons and organized outdoor trips to practice skills learned inside the gym on natural crags.
The gym also features a weightlifting section, enclosed cardio-fitness room, locker rooms, yoga studio and day care center.
Juan Carlos Egusquiza plans to be among the first climbers to try out the new Momentum gym. The University of Houston senior joined his college’s climbing team in 2014, when he first laid eyes on a campus rock wall and became intrigued by the sport making its Olympic debut in 2018.
Climbing isn’t just a physical activity, but a problem-solving one that is best done with peers, the mechanical engineering major said.
Egusquiza, who lives near the Texas Medical Center, typically carpools with friends to gyms in Spring, where they can spend six hours climbing.
“We’re all just super excited,” Egusquiza said of the new Momentum gym. “Climbing is already taking off in Houston, but I think this will bring more climbers together.”