“We spent $8,000 on new turf and flooring alone”
Fitness instructor JENNIFER LAU and her partners transformed a parking lot rooftop into an outdoor gym
“I’VE SPENT THE PAST 17 YEARS working as a fitness instructor, specializing in functional strength training. In September of 2019, I opened Fit Squad with my partners, Aldo Frixione and Gabriel Lee. Our concept was a cross between a boutique gym and a CrossFit studio: all of the intensity in an upscale environment. The planning and build took almost three years and tens of thousands of dollars. We found our dream location at Adelaide and Peter—6,000 square feet, 12-foot ceilings and loads of natural light. We installed premium equipment, a branded Instagram wall and the city’s longest custom turf. Right before the first lockdown, we had our busiest weekend ever, and we were on track to recoup our investment by 2025. Needless to say, spending 80 per cent of our first two years shut down was not part of the business model.
“To say the last 18 months have been tough would be like calling the Ironman race a light workout. When everything closed down, we thought we were talking about a few weeks to flatten the curve— that’s what everyone thought. When we realized it was going to be longer, we started doing some online classes, but the numbers never added up. We still had to pay our staff, and we still had to pay rent, which is $30,000 per month. We were lucky to have a supportive landlord, Crown Realty, but the rent subsidy didn’t kick in until September 2020, and even then it only covered half the rent. We all invested our life savings into the build, so it’s not like we have a rainy-day fund to draw from. Our clients have been really supportive— some even paid their membership fees the whole time, which makes me want to weep with gratitude. But every time there was another round of closures, we lost people.
“Going into this summer, we knew we needed some certainty. We first got the idea
to do a rooftop location from looking at gyms in L.A. on Instagram. And it turned out to be something like fate—we found out our landlord had an unused 3,000-squarefoot rooftop space just two blocks away from our gym, on top of a six-storey car park, and they were willing to partner with us on the new venture. We’re able to use some of the equipment from the main location, but we had to buy a lot of new things to work in the outdoor space: five new squat stands, a new storage structure and an Instagram wall. My partner Gabriel came up with the design and layout. We spent $8,000 on turf and flooring alone. It was going to be Toronto’s first rooftop gym.
“The construction took two weeks, and then the three of us spent four days setting up. I could definitely skip my normal workout after lugging kettlebells up six flights of stairs. We were still laying turf at midnight the night before we opened. I was so exhausted, but my adrenalin was too high for me to sleep. It was like that classic high school nightmare: what if I’m throwing a party and nobody shows up?
“I didn’t have to worry. Clients started coming in at 7 a.m. the next morning. Some were faces I’d seen on screen for more than a year, so to meet them was surreal. When you get to the roof, the city views hit you all at once. My favourite thing has been seeing people’s faces as they take it all in. Like, holy crap, this is amazing! Clients have shown up with champagne and doughnuts. One even brought us a new Nespresso coffee machine. People tend to think of gym-goers as avocado-toast millennials, but our client list includes teachers, parents, front-line workers. One client, a radiologist, texted me the other day saying that coming to our studio helps her do her job.
“We opened on a Monday, and by Wednesday we had to freeze registration because we were completely full. As a small business owner, that was a huge relief. And as a person who has devoted her life to fitness, it’s even more than that. For so long I’ve had to plaster a smile on my face when I’m teaching. Now, for the first time in months, I have something to smile about.
“People are absolutely loving the al fresco experience. Or maybe they’re just loving being able to work out somewhere that isn’t their 600-square-foot condo. It rained on our first day, and on and off the whole next week. I assumed that people might not want to come in bad weather, but we’ve had people working out even when it was pouring. I guess after a global pandemic, what’s a little rain?”