It's the end of an Era.....

 Inner Strength Rock Gym, here in Ft. Collins closed their doors for the last time tonight.

 It was the first dedicated Rock Climbing Gym to open in Ft. Collins, and while I was a bit hesitant, at first, to accept indoor climbing vs natural outside rock as "real" climbing, I soon bought my first membership, 2 months, after they opened in 1994.

 Before long, it became my second home, and helped me thorough a rough period in my life. I was climbing there 3-5 nights a week and met a lot of new friends that had also started gravitating to the "Indoor Gym" scene. It became a mecca for all of N Colorado as well as drawing in a large crowd from S Wyoming.

 It was the place where Natasha and I met for our first date, and the rest is history.

 It introduced me to the world of "Sport" climbing, where I had always previously been a "Trad" climber, and led to many years of exploring new climbing destinations. 

 The 3-5 nights, of 3-4 hrs of constant training also helped my endurance for trad climbing immensely, and I was climbing harder in my 40's/ 50's, than I was in my 20's.

 More than anything, it was the core "family" of regulars that made it a special place. Inner Strength stayed true to it's roots 'till the end. While ever fancier and splashier gyms started cropping up all across Colorado, they attracted an entirely different crowd, the "See and be Seen" scene. Inner Strength was always just one big happy family,  no matter what skill level you possessed.

Thank you, Mike and Tracy, for all of your years of love and devotion.

A lot of good times there, sorry to see it go.

Hmmm - the industry is certainly changing, but seemingly mostly booming.
What would you attribute the downturn to?  

Sad too see it go. That place had such a great community

That is a real bummer. I worked with the Pinnacle group on building it back in the day. I met Jim Karn there when he was setting routes when they first opened. What and amazing experience. Sorry to see them go. What happened? 

4 gyms in one small town. New beats out old.

New beats old, sure but clean and well-lit beats dusty and shadowy regardless of age. ISRG was utilitarian and certainly beat the atmosphere of Miramont if you were trying to escape the Bro-brah culture, but it was way behind the curve as far as facilities goes. The staff was always nice and helpful and the routes were generally pretty fun. Look at BRC, though-- it was starting to get dingy and have competition e.g. Movement boulder and the Golden gym, and they stepped it up, put in a new wall, added amenities, spruced the place up. In the 5 years I intermittently went into ISRG (several times weekly in spurts), about the only thing that changed was the routes, and even those were many times up for longer than they maybe should have been, considering there were only 20-25ish roped routes at any given time.  I'm not speaking ill of the place - like I said, it served a good purpose and clearly the core crew held it dear; the question of why it failed came up, and those are my thoughts on the subject.