The Community Gym is up and running again

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/11/2023 (774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Amie Seier passes rows of gold stars.

“This survived the great fall,” she says, half-joking as she stops at the Sweatfest board.

Smiling faces in pictures look on, pasted beside stars they’ve earned for attending classes at The Community Gym.

Members were two weeks into the challenge — 35 classes in 50 days — when the downtown centre’s ceiling collapsed.

Seier, the gym’s founder, believes old plaster in the 122-year-old building gave way, though she’s waiting on an engineer’s report.

Regardless, the broken ceiling and resulting damage has been cleaned; members filter in for spin and boxing classes again, gathering gold stars for the winter contest.

An early November fundraiser supporting The Community Gym after its ceiling collapsed surpassed its $10,000 goal. People donated more than $8,000 within the first day, and as of Thursday, donations had exceeded $11,300.

“When we paused, that was really difficult,” Seier, 34, said. “It’s a huge piece of my life, obviously, but I think it’s also a huge piece of hundreds of other people’s lives in the city.”

Upwards of 200 members enter the Main Street gym daily, by Seier’s count. She plans to expand the gym’s operations downtown.

Sarah Isaacson is an attendee. She treks downtown from her Wolseley home roughly three times a week.

“I was glad that they got back pretty quickly,” she said after an evening spin class. “I felt pretty gross at home not working out.”

The 28-year-old sometimes stops at neighbouring Parlour Coffee and Chinatown restaurants after hitting the gym. She wouldn’t be downtown as much otherwise, she said.

“I didn’t see what I wanted in my city,” noted Seier, back in the gym.

The Winnipegger had moved to Calgary for a year, working a marketing job in the city’s ski industry.

While in Calgary, Seier became a spin instructor for a boutique fitness studio. She returned to Winnipeg in 2014 and couldn’t find a gym nearby like the one she’d worked at.

“It wasn’t necessarily the workouts that I was missing,” Seier said. “It was this idea of community… people coming together and working out together and hanging out with friends.”

But her parents had been entrepreneurs — it wasn’t a route she wanted to take, she said.

She didn’t feel she had the courage. Around 2017, her outlook shifted.

“I felt like no one was going to do it for me,” Seier recalled. “I had to do it myself.”

She found 31 stationary bikes for sale in Texas via a Facebook group. She bought them and held her first pop-up class in Upper Fort Garry in September 2018.

The pop-ups continued until the following May. Meantime, Seier searched for a permanent space.

She looked in Osborne Village, St. Boniface.

“Everyone I talked to was like, ‘Don’t go downtown, don’t go to the Exchange District,’” Seier said. “Obviously being a business is difficult — you want to cater to markets, and you want to make it easier for yourself to succeed.”

However, she entered the heritage building at 468 Main St. and fell in love.

Soon a deal was in place, and Seier was hauling her bikes to the downtown main floor. She and friends stuffed boxing bags with old clothes.

Seier and instructors held yoga classes and boot camps. She encouraged clients: come downtown, there is parking.

Word of mouth and social media grew the brand. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing gyms to halt in-person operations. The Community Gym began offering online classes.

“I think that’s what’s so gut-wrenching, when you do have to stop business, is just losing momentum,” Seier said.

Momentum had returned until the ceiling collapsed Nov. 1, Seier noted.

“I don’t take one class for granted now,” she stated. “After COVID, after our ceiling collapse, every single class is an opportunity.

“A lot of people are struggling… There’s something cathartic about working out in the right atmosphere with the right people.”

Running a business is “f—ing hard,” she added.

“They’ve had a lot of challenges, and they’ve come back swinging every time,” Andreas Youseph said after a class.

“It is hard to kind of watch these people continually have these things happen. Not just to them, but to the clientele and everyone who… depends on this place.”

Youseph, 29, started attending while living near Pembina Highway. He said the gym is one of the main reasons he comes downtown (work being his other reason).

“It really does become a community,” he said. “It’s well named.”

He likened The Community Gym to exercising in a nightclub — low lights, loud music.

David Pensato, executive director of the Exchange District BIZ, said The Community Gym’s popularity signals a “sign about where the neighbourhood of the Exchange is headed.”

“They really are an additional amenity for the people that spend a lot of time here,” Pensato said.

The Exchange District BIZ proposed a plan last week to quadruple the area’s population in the next 20 years. Currently, the residential number sits around 3,500.

Seier intends to grow her business, taking over more of the building and adding classes and services.

First there’s restoration work to be done — the ceiling’s rafters are still exposed, and the lobby benches are dented.

She’s waiting on a timeline for repairs. Meanwhile, she’ll keep circulating gold stars.

“I mean, there’s no more ceiling to fall down,” she said.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com