We are at Bull City Gym in NC and Powers is the new management company for the gym. Until recently, based on threads like this and similar ones on a CGM FB page, most parents I know at our gym were under the impression that the woman who owns our gym was still the owner but that she
hired an external group to help with HR and management. This is what she told us in an email. We are now learning that the group is Powers and that she actually took a job with their company in AZ or TX. The manager for our local gym apparently is now a regional manager for Powers working for many NC Powers gyms. On paper as listed with the NC secretary of state office for business corporations, Powers is not listed...just the LLC started by the original gym owners.
I have heard they are asked to sign a non-compete that apparently blocks employment at any other gym in any state that Powers owns gyms in. *note that this is heresay only...one of our most successful and longest standing coaches was fired within a week of the "new management company" coming in and has not returned to coaching. Word is that she cannot coach yet because of the non-compete she literally just signed before being terminated, and that she doesn't have the cashflow to fight it out in court. The coach has been very quiet about it and i have no confirmation on this. That said, i definitely believe it is true as I believe she otherwise would have been snatched up right away.
Yes it is true that three of the FIF coaches came to Bull City last summer, one of whom is the main elite program coach, the second is her husband, and the third who seems to be focused primarily on beam and ballet (which is nice since we never had any real dance focus) and sort of seems like the wife/husband couple's little sister. I would hardly call it a "consolidation" of the two clubs as from what I can tell, only one or two DP kids from FIF came over initially, and have both since left. Four or five of the elite/HOPES kids came over with the coaches and then they added a few more to the group from the Bull City original group. Like
@mom2newgymnast mentioned, BCG is 2+ hours from FIF so consolidation was unlikely the goal.
To speak to some of the other points in the thread, we are on our second tuition hike in less than a year as of next month. Went up $70/month the very month Powers took over and now 11 months later, went up another $80/month. For the same number of hours. Meet fees have been doubled or slightly more than doubled.
And with minimal notice, they just eliminated the evening optional program altogether. They did this
after the public school lotteries for charter/magnets had closed (some of which allow kids to leave early for daytime gym, while the vast majority of the traditional districted elementary and middle schools do), after the private school admissions were done, and without enough time for many of the families to be able to put aside enough money now not only for the increased gym tuition and fees, but for tuition for the "gym school" option (I think it is like $7000 or so). And apparently they did not send a team-wide universal notice to the evening kids whose parents anticipated their children training for level 6 for next season. Some parents got word to move to days directly from coaches in a curbsided whisper, others heard through the grapevine from other parents of current evening optional kids or from their kids.
With that, I suspect that the daytime optional program will be "safe" so to speak (ie will not be eliminated like it was at FIF) as they need optional levels for the elite/HOPES kids to compete in between the fancy meets, need people to pay tuition to basically fund the elite training and associated coaching/travel etc., and need to pay for the gym to run during the daytime as 90% of rec is after school hours. And they will likely keep the evening junior team kids (XB, XS, and XG then go to level 6) to feed the TOPS training group or the into the daytime optionals.