Sand City rock climbing gym closing its doors

A popular Sand City climbing gym is closed after more than 20 years on the property.

Sanctuary Rock Gym employees were busy taking apart everything inside their building on Monday. The sounds of drilling and clacking echoed throughout the giant climbing room as workers took down the holds off the climbing walls.

“I had a lot of really emotional people in the last few days, and yeah it’s really hard,” said Michael Bascou, the owner of Sanctuary Rock Gym.

Bascou knew this day might come. When He started this gym 23 years ago, he had some idea of how popular it would be.

“When I opened, I was one of the first 100 gyms in the US, and we’re pushing 700 now,” he said.

The city says the gym and about 20 remaining businesses and people living on this land have until the end of April to move. A new mixed-use project is starting work then, including the city’s first hotel and more than 400 residential units.

But Bascou says their landlord asked them to leave a lot sooner, by the end of this week.

“We’re still trying to understand why we had to go when we could’ve stayed open for a couple more months,” he said.

“Aw man, it’s a heartbreaker for so many people in this community for sure,” said Kellsy Panno, a rock climbing enthusiast.

Panno has been going climbing at Sanctuary since 2005. She says she is sad to see the gym go.

“Especially because it’s not like it’s going out of business because of lack of business, it’s going out of business because of development,” she said.

Still, the owner says he has several places he is looking to move. He feels he has a responsibility to keep things going for the people who love to climb.

“This place affects people, it’s truly a sanctuary for a lot of people,” said Bascou.

KION reached out to the Sand City city manager for an update on the project, but he was out of office. The development project is estimated to triple Sand City’s population.