Molly Hanten and the rest of her staff at Alchemy were crushed last month when Gov. Tim Walz announced the preliminary stages of his “Stay Safe Minnesota” order.
After a couple of months of widespread closures to slow the spread of COVID-19, Walz signed off on a gradual reopening of the state, starting with retail stores and eventually continuing with restaurants and bars, among others things.
Meanwhile, fitness centers were nowhere to be found.
“We are still in the heart of this pandemic, and this can go in a bad direction very quickly,” Walz said last month. “We must keep this virus at a simmer and not a boil.”
His tenor changed last week when he announced that fitness centers, bowling alleys and movie theaters can operate at 25 percent capacity, thus allowing placed like Alchemy to reopen for the first time in a few months. Those reopenings begin on Wednesday across the state.
“We were really hoping to reopen June 1,” said Hanten, who serves as the chief operating officer of the boutique gym. “We had our fingers crossed and our toes crossed, so it was a pretty big bummer when we got that news that we couldn’t do that.”
That said, Hanten knew it was coming at some point, and she wanted her team to be ready for it.
“I’ve been telling my team, ‘OK. Let’s be ready to open within 10 hours,’ ” Hanten said. “We have been operating that way for a couple of weeks regardless, so we felt prepared when we got the official word.”
While so many people are excited about the reopen, with the coronavirus pandemic still far from over, fitness clubs across the state are taking extra precautions right now.
Looking specifically at Alchemy, it won’t even try to operate at 25 percent capacity, instead limiting class sizes to 10 people for the foreseeable future.
“We are going to start on the lighter side with room to grow very quickly if we feel comfortable doing that,” Hanten said. “Our plan is for members to come in, walk into the studio, and actually get checked in for class in the studio so we can operate at even a lower capacity. It makes it easier to maintain social distancing. It also makes it easier for contact tracing because we can monitor who checks in and checks out.”
Aside from reopening, Alchemy is also planning to launch a new online platform on June 15. This comes after hosting classes on Instagram Live and YouTube throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think shifting to digital was a thing everybody in the fitness world kind of knew they had to do at some point,” Hanten said. “You just push it off because it’s such a big project. This gave us that time and allowed us to grow our brand in a way we have never been able to before.”
SAFETY PRECAUTIONS BEING TAKEN
Chet Haider is the general manager at Life Time in Eagan, and like Hanten has spent the past few weeks getting his staff ready to reopen. As much as he wants members to feel comfortable walking in Wednesday, he wants his staff members to feel comfortable, too.
“It’s like the first day of school,” Haider said. “You’ve been in the building before. You’ll be seeing most of the same people. You just don’t know what it’s going to look like now that things have changed a little bit. I think everybody will be a little bit nervous and apprehensive about that.”
To combat some of that nervousness, Life Time will open with increased safety precautions. They include continuous cleaning throughout the day, hand sanitizing stations throughout the club and increased spacing between equipment, among various other things. A full list of these safety precautions is on the company’s website.
“I think the hardest part will be making sure our members know what the new protocols are,” Haider said. “We have to make sure our signage is visible and at the same time not overwhelming. If we put up too many signs, nobody will read any of them. It’s that balance of having the right amount of signage so people pay attention to it.”
In addition to the signage, Life Time has placed social distancing stickers on the floor to reinforce that message and will have various staff members around to answer questions.
Similar to Life Time, other larger brands like Anytime Fitness and LA Fitness have listed various safety precautions on their websites. Most of them are rooted in ramping up cleaning efforts throughout the day and maintaining an acute focus on social distancing.
As for operating at 25 percent capacity, Haider doesn’t think that will be an issue for Life Time. While he expects it to be “pretty busy” at most locations throughout the state, he is expecting most members to return gradually.
“We are fortunate to have a large square footage, so the fire code gives us a pretty large number for people we can have in our building,” Haider said. “I don’t think 25 percent capacity is something we have to be too concerned about. We have seen that in other markets that have already reopened. It’s not like we are going to be coming back to 100 percent capacity right away. It will be a slower build.”
ABLE TO HELP PEOPLE AGAIN
Nonetheless, Haider is excited to get back to work.
“I do this job because I love helping people,” Haider said. “It was really hard to sit in a facility that’s built to serve people and see it completely empty. You just kind of get this sinking feeling, like, ‘I have all these resources, I have this beautiful facility, I have all of this equipment, and nobody can use it.’ I’m really happy to be able to be able to help people once again.”
As for Alchemy, Hanten said the community has kept her team going throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly half of their members have continued to pay over the past few months despite the fact that Alchemy has been offering its classes for free on social media.
“Just the support from our community has been amazing,” Hanten said. “We are so fortunate that we got to continue to make connections with our members whereas a lot of other business didn’t get to do that. We got to be that one hour in somebody’s day that gave them a sense of normalcy. That’s what really kept us going.”
