Here’s Where the Best Developers Are: Your Town
Co-Business owners of 30West (from left to right): Joel Sjogren, Candice Sjogren, Pat Cassingham, Nick Gigliotti, and Jen Gigliotti. (Source: Facebook/30West.)
Tucked away on the Northern edge of Minnesota is a string of towns along the Mesabi Iron Range. At the heart of the Iron Range sits Chisholm, a small town with a population hovering at 5,000. This strong community once provided ore that built railroads and the skyscrapers of New York; but as time passed, and their ore was needed less, Chisholm has had to grapple with new ideas to reimagine itself. One team of local small developers is tuning in to the city’s needs, and building a business they hope will make Chisholm an even better place.
“We want to leave this community in a better place than when we came here,” said Jennifer Gigliotti, business partner and co-owner of 30West, a local fitness center. “We wanted to do something small. It was big for us, but something small that would be good for our kids someday and the future of the community.”
30West is located in downtown Chisholm. The idea of a co-business started to brew when Gigliotti’s husband, Nick, and his softball friend Joel, noticed a two-story building marked for sale. It wasn’t directly obvious what the business should be. But after some thought and conversation, a local fitness center made the most sense, with the Gigliottis having expertise in physical therapy and some fitness training experience.
They started their entrepreneurship with conversations, writing a business plan, and sharing it with a few locals more experienced in business and city planning. After making the co-business deal official between the two couples and securing a loan, life changed swiftly.
About eight months after their first conversation of starting a business, Gigliotti and her husband, with their friends and business partners Joel and Candice Sjogren, opened the doors of their fitness center to the public in January 2019.
“I feel fortunate, now that I look back,” said Gigliotti. “I think, wow, we actually [opened the business] in a shorter time than average.”
(Source: Facebook/30West.)
Without unnecessary hurdles or regulation from over-constraining city rules, 30West was able to open faster than many other businesses throughout North America. Businesses sometimes face overly complicated, expensive rules. Such was the case for Slow Steady Coffee in Dallas, Texas, which had been struggling to open for over two years due to parking restrictions and permit difficulties. Or Josh’s Farmers Market, which had been serving the community of Mooresville, North Carolina, for over 30 years when it was forced to move due to a road-widening project. And once they had moved to a temporary location, the city began to claim the business no longer fit into the definition of a “farmers market” and threatened to close them down.
Since the day 30West opened, Gigliotti says “It has fulfilled the role of a third place in our community.” In their business plan, the team wanted to have a place where everybody, at any stage in their fitness journey, could come and be accepted.
“A lot of people come and they work out, but they're chit-chatting and visiting," said Gigliotti. “We have people who are hardcore focused on heavy lifting. Then there are the retired folks. And you have high schoolers that are in there at 10 p.m. on a Friday night instead of being out on the streets.”
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Gigliotti talked about how members have made the fitness center their own. By leaving gym shoes behind in open cubbies and managing a small fitness store through a trust-and-sign system, the fitness center is a place where “we trust you; you’re family. This is your home just as this is our home.”
After the fitness center was in motion, plans had to shift due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The gym closed down, and 30West began offering online fitness classes. With an empty gym, and people going outside more, the group decided to become a small-scale bike and repair shop, which prepared them for what would come next.
COVID restrictions were ending, and Gigliotti and her team began to think of the next phase of their business. At first, they thought of creating a rock wall.
“But we found out that they were going to build this mountain bike trail,” said Gigliotti, “And so, lo and behold, our thoughts about a rock climbing wall transitioned to mountain biking.”
Chisholm is working to reclaim its legends. One way it’s doing so is through Redhead: a new park with 25 miles of mountain bike trails weaving through its abandoned mines. Since the mines closed, nature has reclaimed the area by turning ore pits into lakes and once-industrial landscapes back into forests. “The peaks and valleys carved into the earth by those miners have created naturally dynamic landscapes perfect for trail systems,” the mountain bike park writes on its website.
Instead of outsourcing an already established bike shop, the Minnesota Discovery Center asked 30West to step in. Now, these local developers are contributing to and further supporting the new direction of Chisholm. With their newly added business partner and bike mechanic, Pat Cassingham, they opened a bike and repair shop.
(Source: Facebook/30West.)
The next phase for 30West is to develop the second floor. “We need the financial resources, but we're working on rehabbing the upstairs now. One: for our bike mechanic to live in an apartment and then, in phases, we would love to have it be a boutique hotel or Airbnb above the gym.” As Redhead gains popularity and brings in tourists, they’ll have a local place to stay.
Small, local developers, when given the ability to work from the bottom up, can do wondrous things for a community.
“It’s not always easy, but if you feel like it’s the right time, do it,” says Gigliotti, who was also several months pregnant when she first began to dream of creating the local fitness center. “Life is always going to be there. But if you have the right people, and if you have a strong enough passion and dream for it, then go for it.”
Starbucks built its brand on being a third place — a communal hangout that fosters communication and conversation — but in recent years, its priorities have shifted to speed of service. Now, instead of returning to its roots, the corporation is trying to redefine what a third place is.