Arkose Gyms During the Heat Wave: A Business Model Overheats

During the heat wave, Arkose’s non-air-conditioned climbing gyms around Paris turned into ovens. Company leadership kept them open anyway. Employees describe workdays that felt like a test of endurance.

© Piet

An investigation published in partnership with Reporterre.

Extreme heat can make things look unreal. But on Thursday, June 25, the scene was not a mirage. In the middle of Parc de la Villette, in Paris’s 19th arrondissement, the new climbing gym run by the French climbing federation, the FFME, was packed. Families sat at tables drinking syrup and water. Remote workers tapped away on laptops. Climbers were on the walls everywhere. Drawn in like magnets, they had come for the brand-new air conditioning.

Less than two miles away, the picture flipped. At Arkose Pantin, a non-air-conditioned gym just outside Paris in Seine-Saint-Denis, the place was almost empty. A fan pushed hot air around. In the back of the gym, two drenched climbers wondered whether they had another burn in them—a climber’s word for another attempt on a route. The air felt so thick you could see chalk dust hanging in it.

“We all knew we were going to get cooked”

Issa, an employee at Arkose

In a matter of days, the unprecedented heat wave that hit France split the commercial indoor-climbing world into two camps. On one side were air-conditioned gyms, suddenly transformed into cool refuges. On the other were gyms without AC, turned into furnaces that only a few stubborn climbers chose to brave.

The climbers, at least, had a choice. The roughly 100 Arkose employees in the Paris region did not. They had to work—at the front desk, in the kitchen, on the climbing floor—in temperatures that sometimes climbed above 104°F. Several of them contacted Vertige Media to describe deteriorating working conditions. All asked to remain anonymous.

Heat Traps and Ice Pops

At the start of the heat wave, when Issa* began his shift, he already knew the day would be rough. “We work in energy sieves,” he said, using the French term for badly insulated buildings. “In the winter, it’s freezing. We all knew we were going to get cooked.”

Issa works at one of the 13 Arkose gyms in the Île-de-France region around Paris. Unlike other large chains such as Climb Up and Climbing District, Arkose’s biggest gyms—Massy, Pantin, Nation, and Montreuil among them—do not have air conditioning. The French company, which now operates 30 gyms across Europe, built many of its climbing walls inside poorly insulated former industrial buildings.

“On Tuesday, June 23, when I got to work early in the morning, it was already over 86°F inside the gym,” said Marine*, another Arkose employee in the Paris region. Marine described a company that was unprepared for a heat wave that, according to Santé publique France, the country’s public health agency, was associated with a 30 percent rise in mortality for the week of June 23 to 28.

“At the start of the day, my manager told me to take 20 euros from the register and go buy Mister Freeze ice pops,” Marine said. At that point, no Arkose employee had received any official message from company leadership. According to our reporting, however, a meeting between management and employee representatives had taken place on Monday, June 22.

The next day, employees saw portable air conditioners, fans, misting devices, and bottles of water arrive. Gym managers adjusted schedules. Often, those same local managers were the ones buying the equipment needed to create “cool-down areas.”

Employees said they appreciated the efforts of their direct supervisors. But every one of them wondered why company headquarters had refused to close. According to information gathered by Vertige Media, several competing chains nearby shut down their non-air-conditioned gyms, at least for part of the afternoon. An Arkose franchise in Angers—independent from headquarters—made the same call, announcing before the heat wave that it would close at 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

“if we close every time temperatures go above 95°F, our operations are dead”

Samy Carmarzana, CEO of Arkose

On the phone, Marine sighed. She could not understand why management had asked her to come to work in temperatures above 95°F. And yet she knew the reason very well. Like most of her colleagues, she had read the same phrase sent to employees in writing: “the need to maintain operations.” “The thing is, that reason doesn’t hold up,” she said. “I was paid to do nothing, so I think they lost more money than they would have by closing.”

Everyone told us the same thing: under normal conditions, at Pantin, Massy, Nation, or Montreuil, a good day brings roughly 600 customer visits. At the peak of the heat wave, that number sometimes fell to 70. “The climbers weren’t buying anything except water,” Issa said. “They’d climb for 20 minutes, leave with an embarrassed smile, and all say the same thing: good luck.”

Whatever the Cost

Contacted by Vertige Media, Arkose CEO and co-founder Samy Camarzana stood by the decision. “At some point, the gyms have to keep running at least a little,” he said by phone. “We can’t just close like that. Or if we do, then find me a generous donor who’s going to make up the difference.”

For Camarzana, the issue is existential. In an increasingly gloomy economic climate for the industry, he said, “if we close every time temperatures go above 95°F, our operations are dead.” Despite that economic pressure, Camarzana eventually had to accept that some gyms would close.

First came the bouldering area at Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis, which reached 100°F. The local manager decided on his own to shut it down. Then came Massy, where the temperature topped 104°F several times. The climbing area was closed after an order signed by the prefect of Essonne on Friday, June 26, “prohibiting sports practice in non-air-conditioned gyms during the red heat-wave alert.”

Laurent* knows Arkose is known for its “365 days a year” opening policy. That did not keep him from getting furious. He works in the kitchen—“where we suffer out of sight”—and knows what it feels like to open an oven when it is already over 104°F outside. So when he learned that Arkose had closed the climbing area in Massy under the prefect’s order but kept the kitchen open, he snapped. “It’s complete nonsense,” he said, angry.

That focus on revenue and productivity is what exasperated every employee we contacted.

“Why open a gym when there are fewer than 10 customer visits in five hours?” Laurent asked. “Why am I standing around in the kitchen when we’re not serving anyone?” He added: “Management’s priorities are clear: the capitalist obsession comes before the health of their teams.”

Camarzana, for his part, said that “overall, we made sure to protect the most vulnerable people.” As proof, he pointed to long discussions with employee representatives and elected CGT union representatives, with whom he said measures were developed jointly.

The first step, he said, was “an email asking employees in non-air-conditioned gyms to contact HR if they had experienced symptoms. If so, we said we would contact them to put in place a partial or total adjustment to their working hours.”

Temperatures in Arkose facilities in the Île-de-France region, as recorded by employees.

Employees did receive that email on Wednesday, June 24, at the height of the heat wave. Issa responded, describing headaches, nausea, and dizziness. That same day, he received a reply from his manager thanking him and confirming that his request had been received.

Then nothing. “No one ever followed up with me or offered me anything,” he said. The next day, he went back to work in crushing heat.

One employee decided on her own not to come to work at Pantin on Thursday, June 25. The night before, two employees had exercised their right to withdraw from work they considered dangerous. On the phone, Issa paused for a long moment before continuing. “That’s what happens when you put an individual responsibility on employees,” he said. “We’re all friends in our gyms. Management knows that. So if it’s on us to declare that we’re stopping work, they also know we’ll be the ones who have to deal with leaving our coworkers in a mess.”

AC, and a Chill Down the Spine

Camarzana acknowledged that “not everything was perfect.” Still, he said he does not believe in “magic solutions.” “The solution is adaptation,” he said. Fans, portable AC units, adjusted schedules, breaks, stools at the front desk—under normal conditions, Arkose front-desk staff are not allowed to sit.

“This heat wave was unprecedented. It was an empirical crash test,” he said. “We did what we could, and each manager adapted in their own way. At Massy, they were constantly spraying water on the glass wall to create some coolness. In other gyms, teams took their breaks in the air-conditioned beer-keg room.”

Camarzana does not want that kind of improvisation to last beyond one summer. Arkose’s goal, he said, is to air-condition its entire gym network by next summer. He puts the cost at several hundred thousand euros, an investment he considers necessary if he does not want his staff suffocating again.

“Putting productivity ahead of employee health is not the image I had of climbing”

Marine, an employee at Arkose

Until then, employees may have to endure one, two, or even three more heat waves this summer. For Marine, Laurent, Issa, and others, the strain is already physical, but it is also mental. Marine described feeling “a mix of anger and disappointment.” “Putting productivity ahead of employee health is not the image I had of climbing,” she said. “Now, when I’m asked to embody the values of the ‘Arkose Family,’ it really gets under my skin.”

She pointed to what she called “the nerve of headquarters,” which, “instead of sending us messages of support, sends reminders telling us not to wear tank tops while working.”

Issa is feeling something else. “Honestly, I’m scared,” he said. “For my physical safety, but most of all because I’m afraid that, once again, my company won’t listen to me or support me.”

He described himself as part of a generation “extremely anxious about climate change.”

“The people who work here are very young, and they’re all scared when they think about the future,” he said. “That lack of consideration adds to our feeling of insecurity.” Then he added: “For most of us, this is still just a job that pays the bills. We’re not going to wreck our health for it.”

*Names have been changed.