Will Halifax Gyms Survive Another Shutdown?
HALIFAX — Area gyms are working out how to make it through another lockdown after an order from the provincial government to once again shut down.
Gyms were among the businesses most impacted by strict new regulations the province imposed on in the Halifax area on November 24 to try and control rapidly spreading Covid-19 infections in and around the city.
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The new rules force gyms to close completely for at least two weeks but come with the very real possibility of being extended.
Few gym owners in the HRM were surprised by the news, but some are frustrated by the government’s approach.
Different rules for different gyms?
Devin Sherrington, the owner of 360fit, understands why rules needed to be tightened but says the specific changes the government made are “shortsighted.”
“My frustrations is that they treat gyms as if it was 25 or 30 years ago when they were the same. They’re not really the same anymore,” he says.
360fit, like many other gyms in the HRM, isn’t a traditional “standard box gym” with a vast selection of equipment any member can come in and use at will.
Instead, they run much more tightly controlled classes, which Sherrington says gives them way more control over what people touch, how equipment is sanitized, and how clients social distance.
He says no one attending 360fit right now will ever be closer than eight feet to another client.
Mathew Benvie, the president of Evolve Fitness, says his gym operates in a similar manner. And at Evolve, any client that attends an in-person class will be safe in their own plexiglass pod, which means Benvie has “a lot more control” over sanitization and social distancing.
Sherrington believes gyms that don’t operate on the traditional model are safer than many think, pointing to the fact that relatively few Covid-19 exposures have come from gyms like his.
He says the government should recognize this and rather than simply “blanket close every single gym” take a more targeted approach.
He’d like to see gyms allowed to stay open but have their capacity limited based on their square footage, similar to the rules now imposed on retail stores. Masks would be mandatory where safe, strict sanitization rules would be in place, and classes would be limited to five people per class.
“I think that would be a much fairer situation going forward,” he says.
Government communication falling short
While Benvie expressed some of the same frustrations with the blanket rules being thrown over gyms, he says he is overall fine with how the government has handled things.
“I’m on board with shutting down and keeping people as safe as possible and hopefully getting it done quickly, so it’s not something that I’m upset by personally,” he says. “It impacts my business, but you’ve gotta’ do what you’ve gotta’ do for the greater good.”
Benvie says the toughest part of the pandemic for Evolve has been the lack of clear direction from the government about if, when, and how rule changes will happen.
He says he was “very caught off guard” when the government first allowed gyms to reopen in June and that he learns about new rules, including Tuesday’s closures, only when the media reports on them.
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Benvie chalks the bad communication up to the government being “overwhelmed.”
“Yes, they could be doing a better job communicating, but they have so many different industries, they have so many different people that message them,” he says. “So the easy answer is yes, some communication would be nice, like, to know they you’re going to have to shut down maybe 48 hours [in advance].”
“But overall I’m on board with the government and you can tell that McNeil and Strang really care about people, and I think that’s the most important thing,” he adds.
Sherrington is less generous in his assessment.
“They don’t tell us a thing. They honestly don’t tell us anything. We find out when everybody else finds out and that’s not reasonable,” he says.
Julie Houde, the co-owner of Queensberry Rules Boxing Studio, also learned she had to shut down on Tuesday, at the same time as the rest of the province.
However, she doesn’t harbour much resentment about it.
“They have probably been up way more than I have thinking about all that and how to handle it,” she says. “I like to think they are doing the best with the information they have.”
She says having to shut down earlier this year also meant she was much more ready to do it again.
“We’ve been through one shutdown that was super crazy, nobody knew what to do, how to get organized. This time we know and we were planning for it. So we’re way more organized and way more prepared to put things in place,” she says.
Will gyms survive a second shutdown?
Houde says Queensbury Rules has survived through shutdowns and capacity limits okay, but that the gym’s financial situation still isn’t great.
After being allowed to reopen in June, the gym pivoted to offer more online classes and reorganized in-person sessions to serve more people under new class-size limits.
That work meant Queensbury Rules was back to about 70 percent of its pre-pandemic attendance. However, with additional labour and cleaning costs, Houde says the books still weren’t stellar.
“Financially we’re still not back, for sure. I’d say we’re not making money but we’re not losing money,” she says. “It’s more work, less money. It’s not ideal but we’re definitely surviving.”
She says if the shutdown doesn’t last too long, they will likely be fine, but if it once again stretches for months things could bad.
Sherrington says 360fit was just starting to get back on more sound financial footing before the shutdown order came.
He says the initial three-month shutdown was “painful” and that business was still slow in June and July, as people were still wary of returning.
“We lost money every month. Then we managed to right that and in September and October it was going in the right direction again — and now this,” he says.
He says his revenue is already down about 40-45 percent from last year, “but this [latest shutdown] is just going to be that much more painful and there’s only so much businesses can handle after a while, and that is my biggest frustration,” he says.
He adds that the federal government’s rent relief program is “probably the only reason we were able to come through all this” so far.
Benvie says federal government subsidies are also the only reason he’s still in business, as well.
“I did get really frustrated with somebody who complained to me about the wage subsidy not long ago. This was somebody who has not been a part of the program at all. I told them well we wouldn’t be in business if it wasn’t for the wage subsidy, so that really hit home for them,” he says.
“We’re already down a lot of revenue, with the wage subsidy kind of topping us up, it’s giving us the ability to still run our business.”
Despite government help and supportive clients, Houde says it remains a very tough time to be a gym owner in Halifax.
“Being a gym is not ideal right now. Maybe I should have gone into toilet paper business or something,” she says with a laugh.
Trevor Nichols is a reporter for Huddle in Halifax. Send him an e-mail with your story suggestions: [email protected].