YOU GAVE US YOUR FEEDBACK…
…we have some responses!
As many of you know, we recently ran a survey across all our locations to find out how you’re feeling about your Hive experience these days. Thank you to those who took the time to help us make your lives better. We truly appreciate receiving your many insightful responses and valuable feedback! There were a few recurring themes throughout the surveys and we feel it’s important that we address them. Let’s get into it!
You want AC in Vancouver…
We know, and we hear you! It’s hot, sweaty, and downright uncomfortable during those summer months. This is something that we would love to see happen, but there are a number of reasons why it’s not currently an option for us:
- The building is old (like, 40+ years old), and the roof is already problematic. It leaks consistently, needs a full replacement sometime soon, and structurally, it can’t support the kind of roof-top units we need to install to provide AC to the facility.
- As a tenant, we have little control over the roof structure itself, and major repairs to the outside of the building are, unfortunately, beyond our control.
Okay, so why do the other gyms get those fancy units while Vancouver sweats?
Including the reasons listed above, the other gyms have AC because either they had it already (Surrey) or we were installing the entire ventilation system from scratch in a brand new building (North Shore).
We know the situation is less than ideal and we wish it was currently in our wheelhouse to throw some AC units onto the roof – but there’s a lot that goes into it! The reality of it is that we can’t do what we want at the moment, but we are working on alternative solutions to this and many other problems that we face.
You want more climbs on the walls…
We’re still piecing together what the right number of climbs looks like at each location, what the ratio of grades should be, and adjusting the size of our new zones. We’re working on finding the right balance of density and quality since switching up our setting format, please be patient with us through this transition period ❤️
As the quantity of climbs increases, the quality of these climbs can’t stay the same. We continue to try new setting methods to bring the highest quality boulders to our community. More climbs doesn’t always allow us to set to our standards and can cause colour crowding on the walls. It also slows down the turnover in the gyms which leads to dirtier, chalkier holds and makes it harder to use volumes on the walls.
All that said, we are certainly hoping to add density to Surrey! Since the facility is so new, we’re still gathering data on what would look best at this location, but you can look forward to us adding more as time goes!
Members-Only Hours are really helpful for crowd control at Vancouver… Can it be a year-round thing?
We’re currently looking at extending our members-only hours to include more months, but making them year-round isn’t an option for us. Why? We want to introduce new people to climbing because we love giving people the opportunity to share in our community & our passion! The only real solution for the traffic and congestion at Vancouver is to find and build a bigger facility. Believe us, we are constantly looking at opportunities for expansion in Vancouver proper, but finding adequate space that fits all our needs is proving extremely challenging.
You want more early mornings…
More early mornings are definitely a possibility, but will come with trade-offs — early openings leave less time for our routesetters to deliver you funky and fresh climbs, since they generally set new routes from 6-10AM on weekdays. We’re firm on our decision to not set during open hours, so more early mornings for you would mean a sacrifice in our routesetting (same quality but less turnover, less climbs). We recognize that a lot of you want those early mornings, but they do come with a price, so we’ll be turning to our community for feedback on this topic!
Again, thank you so much to everyone who participated in these surveys! We appreciate your feedback more than you know and we’re excited to see what our future holds.