Washington State Reopened!

July 2, 2021

Dear Members,

What a heat wave! I wasn’t sure if we would have to close the club because of excessive heat and concern to our staff, but fortunately we have the benefit of being in a basement and that kept the inside temperature to a maximum of 77 over those incredibly hot 3 days.

With Governor Inslee announcing that Washington State is now reopened this week, I am sure people are wondering what changes may come to Ballard Health Club. The primary change to small businesses is that there are now no occupancy limits. Gyms move from a limit of 50% occupancy to 100% of their fire code limit.  Our fire code occupancy limit for the main gym is 176, and I believe the most people we have had at the gym at one time so far this year has been no more than 40 on a busy Monday evening after work, so occupancy limits aren't really a concern. 

The current mask rules for the state match those that we have had in place since June 5th. Those rules state that if our members volunteer to show they are vaccinated, they may remove their mask and are not required to social distance. With the success of our vaccination wristband program, we now have a running average of about 95% of the people visiting the Club day-to-day wearing a BHC vaccination wristband.

With all of that said, we are excited about Washington State moving forward but with the procedures BHC has in place, we are already there.

On another topic, I wanted to address the change to our BASIC membership from pre-COVID days to what we have in place today.  Prior to COVID appearing on the scene, we had been contemplating raising our membership rates due to rising operational costs.  When we were finally allowed to welcome back gym guests without being scheduled earlier this year, we settled on what is included in a Basic versus a PLUS membership.

What we came up with, rather than raising overall membership rates, is to limit the visits of our BASIC membership to 4 times a week and to not include 24/7 access.  The idea here is to encourage members that make more extensive use of the Club by coming 5 or more days a week and/or after hours to upgrade to a PLUS membership that has unlimited club visits, unlimited classes and 24/7 access. We also changed the PLUS upgrade for Insurance Provided Memberships (Silver Sneakers, Silver & Fit and Renew Active) from $10 to $20 a month for the same reason. 

We are planning on starting after hours access to the gym on August 1st.  This will allow access to the club 7 days a week, 24 hours a day for members with a PLUS membership. We have reset our after hours door system and it will require new after hours key fobs. We will start providing new key fobs mid-July to those members requesting them at the front desk.

After over a year of success with our 50+ weekly virtual online classes, we  started slowly reintroducing in-studio classes over the last month. With our 95% vaccination rate at the Club, people are feeling safe while attending these classes.  We have been refining our “hybrid” class offering of having both in-studio and virtual at the same time.  Our first hybrid class offering has been Aurora’s Tuesday and Thursday Circuit Training class at 8:30am. Taylor’s in-studio Zumba class has been a hit for Friday nights at 6:30pm. We will be adding more hybrid and in-studio only classes as we move forward.  For a truly unique experience, try our Yoga at Sunset Hill Park Wednesday nights at 6pm or Saturday mornings at 10:30am.

A great part of my job every day now is seeing more and more members return to the Club that I have not seen since last March. It feels like a family reunion. Thank you all for supporting this club through these last sixteen months, and I can’t wait to see more of you coming in to workout once again. 

Sincerely, 

Pat Gilbrough
Owner, General Manager
pat@ballardhealthclub.com