Considering it was only on the 8th floor in the middle of New York City, the windows at Peak Performance - the gym Kyle and I worked at prior to opening The Fort - showcased remarkable views.
To the north we were dead on to the iconic Empire State and Chrysler buildings and to the south we got to witness the step by step construction of One World Trade, better known as The Freedom Tower.
But the view that Kyle and I were most captivated by was that of a non-descript two story, orangey-red brick building directly across the street.
The only clue to what might lay inside the mysterious structure was a rather large red and blue industrial sign that interrupted the plain brick facade which read “Ace Pump Co.”.
We had no idea what an Ace Pump Co. was. The windows were blacked out and the garage door (a really rare sight to see on a middle-of-the-block building in our neighborhood) was never, ever opened.
“That place would make an amazing gym,” we would say as we stared at the building between sets of sled drives.
“Can you imagine training while having that garage door open out to the sidewalk! It would be insane!”
Fast forward a few years. Through a bit of luck and perhaps fate we found a location for our first facility on the same block as our old gym and that mysterious two-story brick building.
And while we could no longer peer at it through the window, we would walk by the mysterious Ace Pump Co. daily while walking to Starbucks in sleeveless t-shirts and shorts on winter days.
I couldn’t tell you exactly when I first noticed it but without any warning or provocation, in the middle of the pandemic, the Ace Pump Co sign came down and a paper “For Lease by Owner” sign now filled the previously blacked out window.
Did we need new space at the time? No. We had a perfectly good and empty conditioning facility on 19th street as well as our original gym in the basement.
But I couldn’t resist. It was the building we always wanted!
I called the number on the sign late on a Friday night and spoke to a wonderfully ambitious newly post-college real estate broker who took my call during his commute home on the Long Island Railroad.
The kid had more enthusiasm than follow-through, however and after promising to get me all the information I needed, I never heard from him again.
Or maybe I just never picked up the phone. It’s hard to remember.
In either case, I’d put the idea out of mind.
Until Kyle did some lawyering and figured out that we could move out of the dud on 19th Street without penalty because of some temporary laws that were in place to help struggling businesses during the pandemic.
And our dream building still stood empty. Or so we thought.
Kyle tracked down the landlord only to learn that he had rented out half of the building - the cool half with the garage door - just days earlier. But the upstairs was available if we wanted to take a look.
So we looked. Then we planned. And in record time we moved out of 19th street and into the top floor of the former Ace Pump Co. building. We affectionately nicknamed the new space “The Engine Room”.
We were halfway there.
We quickly learned our downstairs neighbor was going to be a posh clothing boutique. They moved in and hated us right away.
That hatred, combined with a complete lack of customers, led them to vacate the premises a few years later.
And this is the shortened (believe it or not!) story of how we have now come to have three gyms on the same block in New York City. That new building opens today.
But in typical Dan fashion, it’s a story about much more than that.
Because as I stand looking up at the new two-story flagship location of the Fortitude Strength Club and think back upon the days when we looked down on the very same Ace Pump Co, building, I certainly feel proud and I definitely get teary-eyed. I’m nothing if not nostalgic.
It’s an incredible thing to know that you have enough support from your community to help make a long-standing dream come true.
None of it is lost on me. I am unbelievably grateful.
But the dream has also gotten bigger and more important since we spent our rest periods day-dreaming out of that 8th story window. It’s no longer just about opening cool gyms.
It’s about bringing meaningful fitness to as many people as we possibly can. My hope is that this building and all the shiny toys we’ve put inside of it gives us a place to bring that to you and showcase it to people who could really use it. Which, if you ask me, is everyone.
Because helping you feel comfortable and capable and powerful in your body and your mind is really what we’re going after.
And my hope is that more people will join us on that journey.
Luckily we’ve got a great new building to put them all in.