09/05/2025
Today, after being closed for a week, I thought I’d share a little insight as to some of the real reasons I closed UnderGound Fitness.
One, bad choice of location. Sharing a place with 5 different businesses, who, other than the first and the present, attracted no traffic or very little.
Two, limited hours of operation. 5-9pm weekdays didn’t attract enough. 9-9 on Saturdays and 10-6 on Sundays were equally good ineffective in drawing in people. Again, bad location choice played into this I’m sure.
Three, utilities. When you get zapped for a customer charge of $60 X2 for what I’ve been told is for the meters. Seriously? It costs $60 a meter for something that, while necessary, is absolutely ridiculous. Is the City of Wamego renting these meters? If so I doubt it’s $60 a meter for them. I had 2, but heard some places in a 3X5 block area had 5+. Things that make you go hmmm. Even though for most of my time downtown I split the bill with someone else, $300-$500+ bills are a little ridiculous considering $60 times how ever many meters you have is probably about 25% of the bill
Four, lack of support from the local Chamber of Commerce. I opened in 2016. I joined the Chamber. All I got was a ribbon cutting. I didn’t renew the next year. Between that ribbon cutting and the day I closed, I saw one person who is associated with the Chamber. We had several new directors in that time, but not a one of them bothered to see why myself and others weren’t members. No calls, no visits, no nothing. And, no excuses given as to why. You ever think if you really gave a care about the places that weren’t members and addressed those places, we might have been more receptive to sponsoring your events. I did one last year, as a non member and got a statement for a membership in my email the next day. No thank you, no visit, no nothing.
Four, lack of support from other businesses. How many downtown businesses actually knew me and what my place offered? 5-6, maybe? Anybody stop to visit and find out? 4, maybe. Of course, there was one that, anytime I made suggestions on things that might benefit or at least get others thinking about how to improve the downtown, chose to belittle most anything I suggested. But, when I suggested that the person come and sit down and find out who I am and what I offered, wouldn’t step off the pedestal and lower themselves to do that.
Fifth and most important in my decision to get out of business in Wamego. The Wicked Marathon, Half Marathon & 5K running event. This was run for 6 years prior to being shut down by city management and Covid. It drew several hundred runners and their families, not just from around the Wamego area, but from a the country and a few outside of the US. I’m the race director for the event. I made an attempt last year at trying to bring this event back. But after being stonewalled by the city management for several months, I decide to search for a venue that would welcome an event that might draw the number of people this one did. I understand the street construction affected the USTAF certified courses. But the biggest challenge was being told that we couldn’t start the race at the Oz Museum as it had been done for those 6 years, because Lincoln Avenue is a highway. Being told we couldn’t run on Balderson because it’s a truck route, and we had to use someone that was never involved in the event to make the course modifications to avoid the street construction. Utter amazement in how the same stonewalling of my attempt to bring back this event centered around an Oz theme didn’t stop city management to block off the “highway” for probably the worst Oztoberfest I’ve seen since I was open downtown. I finally decided that all I was doing was wasting my time on the city management trying to bring back what was a huge draw at the end of March for 6 years.
You all can voice your opinions about what I’ve written. That is your right. But, in my opinion and those of some others, until something changes in the infrastructure of the City of Wamego, nothing is going to change in the downtown. There have been some changes, a few new places, but, the people in charge need to ask why a business that had been open 20 years closed. Why my business of 9-1/2 years closed. But in my opinion it is not a big deal if it isn’t benefitting them directly.
Darin Miller and a couple others have put together some pages that are about Downtown Wamego and he shares thing that other towns have done to revitalize their downtown areas. Maybe the local infrastructure should look at some of these posts.
