At a time when epidemics of obesity and mental health illnesses are continuing to affect the children of our communities, activities such as indoor climbing offer an avenue for improving our children’s mental and physical wellbeing.  One such institution which has been serving this mission in the Seattle Eastside community since 1992 is Vertical World, part of the local company that started America’s first indoor climbing gym in 1987.  This gym has helped thousands of kids and adults over the last three decades by providing education, support and a place to climb.  It is possibly the longest standing climbing facility in the nation and has contributed enormously to the regional growth of rock climbing as a pastime and competitive sport.  More importantly, it has provided a great resource to countless children of this community.  A large portion of their staff is school-aged young adults.  After three decades as an institution of the community, a private equity firm known as Lift Partners (San Francisco) purchased the property and decided not to renew the lease for Vertical World despite efforts from the gym to both lease the entire building and also to pay a higher market-rate rent.  Instead of trying to negotiate a deal with Vertical World, Lift Partners chose to lease the location to a new business tenant.  According to Lift Partners’ website, their company takes “underutilized properties to create functional and desirable space for today’s occupiers”.

This type of profit grab at the expense of our community and the health and wellbeing of its children cannot go unrecognized and unchallenged.  Stories about the dangers of foreign investors coming in to tear our communities apart have distracted us from the sinister dangers posed by private equity firms within our own country.  If we turn a blind eye to companies making decisions from afar that maximize profit with no regard to the values of the local community, we will witness a slow and continuous erosion of institutions that serve a greater purpose for our citizens.  What type of society is one where the needs of our children are considered expendable or irrelevant?  The very individuals at Lift Partners who made this decision overlooked the fact that they themselves were able to succeed in life because they had opportunities to grow and develop through sporting activities, choosing instead to take an invaluable resource away from the children of our community.   Lift Partners claims assets under management of $1B and an operating capital of $650M.  Does this sound like a company that needs to close one of America’s oldest climbing gyms to make enough money?

The Vertical World gym in Redmond is scheduled to lose their lease in May 2023.  We must move urgently to tell Lift Partners and all other private equity firms that we will not stand for people making soulless business decisions that sacrifice the physical and mental wellbeing of the children in our communities.  Our children represent the future and we must show them that when faceless corporations disregard their needs to make a few extra dollars at their expense, the adults in their lives will stand up and say THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.   We need to keep places like Vertical World Redmond for our kids and send a message to Lift Partners to reconsider and make the right decision for our greater community.  That decision would be to work with Vertical World to preserve this 30-year institution so that it can continue to improve the lives of countless kids and adults in the Seattle Eastside.  We must send the message to private equity that we will not tolerate the dismantling of our community’s health and wellbeing just so a faraway faceless company of outsiders can make a few more dollars at our expense.  Also, let’s show the City of Redmond how much Vertical World means to this community.