Starting a "private" gym without the goal of profit in mind
Hey Rip -
I live in a town with one legit non-crossfit gym. They have all the space and equipment anyone could ask for. There's just one problem - the people that run the place are complete idiots and cheap as hell. They don't maintain the equipment at all. Those of us that are serious all have our own bars (for which they charge us a storage fee of $7 a month) because the ones they provide haven't been lubed up in probably a decade. They even cut the bathroom soap in the dispensers down with water to stretch it more. They complain about how much chalk we go through.
They tend to buy used equipment from universities in the area that are swapping out for new stuff, which is fine, but they put absolutely no effort into maintaining it. Most of the platforms have developed deep ruts/valleys so the bar wants to roll around. They tried to build a new set of platforms in a different spot, but they put down 2 layers of rubber instead of one, so all the pulling blocks, jerk blocks, and bumpers bounce around like crazy, damaging the wood so they made them "out of order" and blamed it on the members "misuse of equipment."
There's a good group of us that all train together in the evenings and we've all threatened to leave, but they get away with this sort of shit because there's no real competition in the area other than Crossfit. This led our little training group to discuss finding a small place to rent out and going in on it together. We'd have our say on equipment and keep out the idiots who come in and fuck everything up. The ultimate goal being just to break even on rent and what not.
I'm sure there are a lot of reasons why this sort of "non-profit co-op gym" would be a bad idea, but I just wanted to get your thoughts on it.
Thanks