Three Rivers Athletic Club to host ribbon cutting ceremony Friday

The fitness center once thought to be closing for good will host their ribbon cutting ceremony Friday, October 2 at 1:30 p.m. at 501 S. Health Parkway. The ceremony will be under the gyms new name and ownership, Three Rivers Athletic Club. 

Beacon announced in September that it was going to be closing the gym, a shock to many who relied on Beacon Health & Fitness for a space to exercise and cultivate community. 

In the wake of that announcement, Brock Yost, who was entering a “semi-retired” phase of his life, realized he still had work to do. 

“The community was in such an uproar about it,” Yost told Watershed Voice. “So I started working with Beacon health, decided that I was going to go ahead and delay the semi-retired life, and dive back in to try to save this building and keep it open for the community.” 

Once Yost decided to pursue the project, he made it a goal to minimize the time the gym was closed, setting a goal of October 1 at 5 a.m. for its grand opening. Sure enough, this morning, just as Yost had hoped, the gym was open again. 

Just opening the gym again isn’t all Yost is hoping to do. He plans to remove the weights from the basketball court floor and open that back up. Yost said he plans to start basketball, volleyball, and pickleball leagues on the court, hoping to grow the community and provide a space for people to exercise beyond the typical treadmill or weights. Yost added that the pool will stay open as before, and he plans to bring back family youth swimming. 

“Bring back a little bit of the feel of having some adult leagues or co-ed leagues with basketball, volleyball, pickleball — all those court sports that we can utilize in the wintertime that adults could use to stay healthy without getting on a treadmill and lifting weights. That’s not for everybody,” Yost said. “Some people like sports, so we want to bring that back in without necessarily overcrowding the place with youth.”

The membership rates are expected to stay mostly the same. However, if you had a membership to Beacon, it ended on September 30 and did not transfer to the new ownership. To purchase a new membership, go to the Three Rivers Athletic Club’s website.

Yost is also planning to add contrast therapy to the gym, which involves alternating between hot and cold temperatures, which he said has health benefits. Yost and his wife, Autumn, have a long history in the local fitness community, including owning and operating the Pit Fitness Ranch and Triple River CrossFit. Brock Yost has also worked as a strength and conditioning coach for Three Rivers Community Schools. 

“If anybody was gonna do it, we were set up to do it because we had the gym management software,” Yost said. “We have the personnel and staff, and we have the equity and the community and relationships. And it felt like if it was going to be saved, it was going to be somebody like us. It felt like we had the opportunity to do it at the time, so we jumped on it.”

Maxwell Knauer is a staff writer for Watershed Voice.