A Great Start!

Well, we're off to a great start! The lumber has all been delivered, we've framed up the 50 and 60 degree walls! We're moving so fast, we have to wait a day for the structural engineers for the building to catch up on the work that they have to do before we can continue.

A special thanks to all who came out to help us this weekend! This includes Keith, Chris, Dan, Micah, Lynn, Jim, Aaron, Mike, Matt, Liz, Vern, Scott and Jacob. Extra thanks to Kris for leading the build out and keeping everyone on task! (I'm sorry if I missed you). For all those who have emailed us offering their help with their contact information, thanks! We'll continue to email you/give you a call as we need more hands. We hope the structure work is finished tomorrow so we can begin the next part tomorrow night, or Wednesday.

... stay tuned, and if you're not following us on Facebook, we post pictures there as soon as we take them!

We Have Wood.

The wood has been (precariously?) delivered!

We start building tomorrow at 8:00 AM. If your interested in helping out with the build, please send an email to info@mnclimbingcoop.com to let us know if you want to give us a hand. Let us know when you can help, and what building experience you may have!

MNCC @ the Expo

We will have table at the Midwest Mountaineering Outdoor Adventure Expo on April 17th. Come visit us and check out all of the cool things going on at the Expo. It's a great event, and you don't want to miss it!

The Build Out...

To get the build out going, our plan of action is to start by building the support tower, then once the lumber is delivered, put up the support beams, and frame in the basic structure. We've given Kris Johnson the daunting task of guiding the build out process and making sure everything is built to specification, and that we have all the supplies we need to stay on track. Kris is the man.

Thanks to everyone for the community feedback regarding the wall build-out plans.

We've received lots of great feedback from members, access pass holders and other interested climbers and it's been extremely helpful. Based on feedback, structural restrictions, and the amount of investment money we have available for the build-out, we've made some adjustments to our initial build-out designs.

We are now planning on ...

• moving the 60° and 50° walls around.
• smoothing out some of the transitions to reduce right angles.
• moving the cave opening to the front of the tower and opening up the cave wall next to the 45° to allow for exit points on two sides
• Building a stalactite feature to utilize the support for the corner of the cave
• Angling the top-outs to make them more interesting than flat surfaces
• Opening up the side walls of the 50° and 60°.
• A prow feature on the corner of the tower.

Operation City Approval, Success!

The kind folks at the Minneapolis permit office have approve our change of occupancy to "assembly" and issued a permit to build. We now have our building permit from the City of Lakes. The Bohm building management team has started the process of replacing the industrial sliding door with double doors that can tie into our keycard system. They have requested that no one be in the space while they are working on the doors so they can maintain a safe work area, and we will oblige. After the doors are installed, we can start building.

With this knowledge, we are wholly confident that we will be open by April 1st, 2011!

We have had an overwhelming amount of offers from people who are excited to help out with the build-out. Your support is greatly appreciated! We are specifically looking for people with building skills and experience. If you have either of those please let us know. We are planning on getting a calendar up on line to let people know when we will be working on the build, and what phase.

January Sale Success, and Our TODO list

Thanks to all who bought a 1-Year access pass during the January sale! We have sold 65 memberships, and 42 1-year passes so far with quite a few people who will be buying when we open. Thanks also to all those who purchased stock as this is what we need to complete our build out.

We were hoping to get $20,000 for our initial build-out, but we made our minimum bare-bones build out amount of $16,000. That's enough to build (but not for all the cool stuff we want in the gym). Please contact us at info@mnclimbingcoop.com if you are willing to pitch in a few bucks to help cover any additional build-out costs. For smaller amounts, you can use the DONATE button to the right. For larger amounts, you have the option of purchasing stock certificates. Please contact us for details.

We have some more news on the Climbing Coop. We've met with the city a few times now, and we've been ensured that our wall plans are good, our occupancy and exits are OK, and now we just have to wait for the paperwork to go through. When we last met, they "said" it would be about 10 days go get the paperwork through.

We've placed the order for the flooring and the order for our lumber is all queued up and ready to go. We're itching to start the build, but we need to make sure that the last of our ducks are in order first.

Taking all of those things into consideration, we should be able to have the leased signed and the city approvals within a week. Add to that a 4 week build-out and we hope to be open Mid-March!

Access Pass Sale This Saturday!

Hey climbers – we're giving you the opportunity to get in early and save big on Access Passes to the Minnesota Climbing Co-op, opening soon. Save $100 on our 1-Year Access Passes (normally $350). On sale now until January 16th! And get your one-time $20 Membership too! Cash and checks accepted.


Saturday January 8th 2011
10:00 am – 5:00 pm
1620 Central Ave NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413

$20 Memberships and $250 1-Year access passes will be on sale! Bring your checkbooks and avoid the PayPal fees tied to the online purchase form. You'll also be able to get all of the paperwork out of the way as we will have all the forms you need to sign printed out and ready to go.

We will have a table setup in the common area right next to Diamond's Coffee shop. Grab some coffee, say hi, check out the space for the gym, look at our build out plans, feed us your ideas for the build out, and purchase your membership and access pass all in one fell swoop! Oh, and don't forget to check out BrickWorld!

Can't make it? That's okay…just click onto mnclimbingcoop.com now and purchase your Membership and Access Pass via Paypal today.

You may have heard that there was going to be an art aspect to our pre-opening pass sale but due to the busy holidays, communication with the building managers was limited at best and as it turns out, renting the space for a one day art show is too cost prohibative. Luckily we are located in the Arts District of NE Minneapolis, so we'll have quite a few more opportunities for art shows coming up. We definitely want to do something durring the NE Art-a-Whirl, so we'll be listening for ideas!