PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Plans to open gyms and fitness studios in southeastern Pennsylvania this week were scratched when officials announced that coronavirus infection rates were too high.
After months of closure, small fitness boutique owners, such as Hagana Kim and his wife, Callie, are wondering what the future looks like.
The Kims opened the small fitness boutique Tuck Barre & Yoga in Philadelphia in 2017, and it has since expanded to five locations.
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“All of the experts agree that breathing hard in an indoor, enclosed space is one of the riskiest things you can do,” Hagana said. “And that’s exactly what we used to do.”
He says he’s glad officials decided not to open gyms, but the outlook is grim.
“That’s what small studio boutique fitness is. So, unless there’s a vaccine that’s widely adopted, I don’t really see a safe way to reopen our business — certainly not in the very near future.”
He says they have benefited from a couple of small loans, however:
“We’ve been doing our best to pay rent. We haven’t gotten much rent relief at all, except for one of our landlords. Every month we’re losing money and we’re kind of digging ourselves deeper,” Hagana said. “We did get an EIDL loan, which has certainly been a lifeline, but again, that’s just a loan, and every month we’re just sending that money off to pay rent.”
He says they’re not making much money, and they’re going to reach a point where it doesn’t make sense to pour any more money down the hole.
“It’s getting close to that point,” he said. “We’re still hanging on for now, but it’s hard to see how to see how we get to the other side of this.”
Many other business owners are in similar situations and unsure of the future. The silver lining? Kim says they’ve been offering free and donation-based fitness classes on Facebook Live since the studios closed, making fitness more accessible to people in Philadelphia and across the world.
“The need is absolutely there. We get so many messages from people we’ve never met from all over the country. Some all over the world. They tell us, ‘Thank you so much. This is keeping me sane.’ Those messages mean so much. It’s nice to be actually helping people,” he said.
Gym reopening plans are set for August, but officials could push that back again depending on the daily rate of increase in coronavirus cases.
