‘It’s always been our gym and our community’: Ellicott City residents work to save Miss FIT from closure

On Monday night, Shelley Sharkey taught what could be her last kickboxing class to the Miss FIT community in Ellicott City.

The group fitness training center for women on Main Street needs to raise $100,000 by early next week to cover back rent or shut its doors permanently.

“This has never been my gym; it’s always been our gym and our community,” said Sharkey, who owns the gym. “The hardest part of all of this is telling these women, who have become like family, that this isn’t going to be here again.”

The gym has survived multiple moves, including one after flooding in 2018 decimated its location. Now the coronavirus pandemic has put the gym in jeopardy, and Sharkey, 39, said a recently created GoFundMe effort is the gym’s last resort.

When Sharkey announced that she was shutting her doors, she said customers reached out in droves asking about fundraising efforts. That led Sharkey to create the GoFundMe page. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than $11,000 had been donated.

“We hadn’t quite built it back up because of still recovering from the flood. At this point, we’re facing back rent that we need to pay in order to stay,” Sharkey said. “It’s gotten to the point that we want to move forward, but if we want to do so, we have to get over this huge bump.”

Sharkey said she will keep pushing to raise the funds until June 22.

“If we can just survive this time, we will thrive on the other side,” she said. “Moving forward is hard when you’re also trying to play catch up from before, trying to play catch up on what’s past due and then also pay what’s currently due. We’ve faced so much loss that I haven’t been able to do it.”

When the May 2018 flood hit Ellicott City, the gym had 25 employees; now it’s down to only four instructors. Before the pandemic, Sharkey offered a day care service and had an office staff. Now, she said she can only afford to hire instructors.

Miss FIT first opened in 2013 in a Catonsville location off Route 40, then moved Main Street in Ellicott City in July 2017. Since then, the gym has occupied a number of spaces.

At the time of the historic 2018 flood, the gym was located inside the former Caplan’s Department Store site, which was then destroyed. In September 2019, it moved to a new location further up the hill on Main Street. Months later when the pandemic struck, Miss FIT was forced to close from March to July 2020.

“Our main thing is community and people gathering in the same space; that’s what carried us after the flood. Then when the pandemic hit, the very thing we are known for is gone. We couldn’t do it,” Sharkey said.

Rebecca Geipe, 47, has been a Miss FIT member for six years, attending classes four or five times a week. The Ellicott City resident said she followed Sharkey from location to location over the years.

Geipe said she was elated to find a gym where she and her teenage daughter could participate in classes together.

“It’s so difficult to find a place that has these classes, especially that it’s geared to women,” Geipe said. “It’s a community that supports each other so much.”

Sharkey said because of the nature of her business it has been difficult to get back to pre-pandemic membership. As businesses were allowed to reopen, some people remained hesitant to return to gyms.

Though membership started increasing last month, Sharkey said it hasn’t been enough to keep her doors open without some assistance.

Applying for federal help through the Economic Injury and Disaster Loan program and the Paycheck Protection Program did not provide enough support for her business, she said. The EIDL program, which Sharkey said was based on her finances in 2019, a year in which she was only open for four months after recovering from the flood, offered her $1,000 to be paid back over 30 years. The Paycheck Protection Program loan offer was for $4,000.

“Our operating expenses are so high, it paralyzed me a little bit,” Sharkey said. “It felt like this giant mountain I would never be able to climb. I kept hearing about amounts other businesses were getting and I was happy for them, but I wanted that, too.”

With substantial rent and large payroll costs, Sharkey said the debt just kept rising.

“When we needed money in the past, we would host different events, but we couldn’t even do that because we weren’t able to bring people together in a gym,” she said.

Despite the challenges, Sharkey said she’s grateful she had accommodating landlords throughout this time.

If the necessary funds are raised, Sharkey said she hopes the versatile space at 8225 Main St. could also be used for other events as a second form of income on weekends and during the evening. The gym currently occupies the former Little Theater on the Corner space, which was previously a movie theater dating back to the 1940s. It has also served as a music venue, dance hall and storefront in the past.

“We have this gorgeous space that can be utilized by the community,” she said. “We can’t move forward with those plans if we’re sitting on this giant hurdle.”

Geipe said she changed her plans Monday to ensure she’d be at what may be Miss FIT’s last class.

“It’s going to be hard to focus. It’s going to be very emotional. We’re all such a tight-knit group,” Geipe said. “Beyond this being a gym, there’s just such a tight community that is going to suffer so much without having that camaraderie that we’ve come to know and love. It’s a huge hit for all of us.”