Momentum Indoor Climbing Silver Street — Attraction in Houston

I’ve been climbing at this gym for the past 5 years. For the first time, I am considering leaving Momentum for another gym due to changes in the way the gym treats their members. I’m not talking about the general staff, as I’ve always had great experiences with them. I don’t know at what level management it stems from, but communication to members is awful. Here are some examples.

The Silver Street location has been through a lot in the past several months, including flooding, power issues and nonfunctional AC, poor ventilation, and water issues to name a few. More than half of the commercial sets have been closed for over 2 months now, due to flood damage. The management waited several weeks to even make a decision on replacing damaged pads (to wait on insurance to fully cover it). Throughout that time there was no communication on a plan or timeline to get the gym back to full capacity. After nearly three months of extreme crowding in 1/3 of a gym, they have never offered members any kind of pro-rate or benefit in the absence of the facilities. In fact, my monthly charge just went up by $5.

In an unrelated incident this spring, a hold was broken on the gym’s only system board (2019 moonboard) earlier this year. They put up a temporary hold, and after some complaints, taped a sign up that said, “the hold has been ordered” to placate the members. After 3 months with no hold replacement, the gym announced via instagram that they were bringing the old 2016 moonboard back. The gym had clearly lied about having ordered the hold, and reverted to the old setup. I assume this is because they didn’t want to fork over $500 to replace the entire holdset. Over that same time, we saw multiple sets of shiny new commercial holds go up in the gym. Single routes that likely cost several hundred or thousands each. Clearly the priority is not taking care of loyal members that use training boards, but bringing in new folks with the those flashy V2s.

I would understand taking forever to replace pads or refusing to pay to replace a system board if this were a small, independent gym. This is a national chain. Part of the trade of selling your soul to a massive corporate gym is the expectation of a level of quality and consistency, and that setbacks should be short since giant companies can eat more temporary financial costs to keep things running smoothly. I guess Momentum is the worst of both worlds.

The only way the gym seems to communicate en masse is via Instagram nowadays. I don’t blame them for the things that have befallen the gym, but I am sick of how those situations are communicated and handled. This week, the gym had a water outage, and full breakdown of the AC (which has not been working well for weeks). No instagram story, no post, no email, no website update. I left work early to get to yoga and did my hour commute to find it was over 90 degrees inside. I went to blistering hot yoga and decided not to climb. There has still been no information on instagram, let alone any other communication streams. The only reliable way I know what is going on is when my friends are there to send firsthand updates, or if I call the front desk. If I go in today, is it going to be 100 degrees? Are the bathrooms working? Who knows?? This might be the last straw for me.

Hopefully Momentum can get back on the right track soon. If not, a whole lot of their loyal base, myself included, will be signing up at Crux next year. If there were ANY other gym downtown I would have...

Updated August 2024: had to come back to edit the rating due to the condition of SST, which has always been quite crowded, dirty, and equipment not really kept UTD/in good working condition but the past few months has been horrendous. Listen, I LOVE silver st. The setters are fantastic, the members are lovely, the staff is kind, and the location is stellar. However, there has always been very poor management. This is not a new issue. There is just a lot of backlash right now because the issues have gotten to a point that they can't be ignored by the diehard fans of momentum anymore (no AC when it's 100° out in a metal warehouse-ish building, half the gym closed for 2+ mo). Both of these problems should've been handled better; management should've been more transparent with timeline AND gotten with a different HVAC company. This summer is not the first summer that the HVAC has had problems. The AC problem has been off and on for years. Clearly there is a bigger problem with it and the current HVAC company is not cutting it. The gym being half closed was unavoidable, BUT management has done absolutely nothing for members. At the VERY LEAST they should be limiting evening hours (3pm-close) to members only. I'd even go a step further and say that they should also be discounting memberships and/or crediting back some money to the prepaid members. Under no circumstances should a gym be allowed to get to a point where there is a LINE to do a climb. On top of all of this, the gym is dirtier than it's ever been. Don't get me wrong, it's always been dirty (pretty nasty walls, stained and stinky bench mats, clumps of hair and dustbunnies especially in the weight room, 1-2 musty wet rags to wipe equipment, cardio machines always on the fritz, unusable shreds of barbell pads, etc.) but with the increased foot traffic in such a TINY space for hundreds of people every single day it's gotten really gross. I have to sweep/blow out my own little square of floor if I do any floor exercises and bring my own barbell pad. The same clump of hair sat by one of the lifting benches for at least 5 days. All of this could be SOOO easily remedied by replacing some of the ancient pads/equipment, keeping the single use disinfecting wipes stocked, and just sweeping/vacuuming thoroughly once a day. For the premium price of $84/mo per member, this is a teeny tiny ask that shouldn't even have to be asked for. Nothing about SST feels worth $84, and I would not have a membership without the prepaid discount. I still go to Momentum quite often despite these issues because I don't have a regular gym membership, and right now climbing is the majority chunk of my life, but it has gotten to a point where I feel like management is purposely overlooking all the issues with SST because they know members have no other choice. SST has the market cornered (for now) and management has fully taken advantage of it's members because they know that they can.

Updated July 2023: Looove the routesetting here compared to the other gyms we've tried while traveling. Super unique and well thought out usually!! The only downfall of this location is the walls/holds are pretty dirty due to the amount of traffic they get. Wish momentum would open another innerloop TR/lead/boulder gym combo like Katy to help with how many members there are. The other qualm is they took down the paper towel dispenser in the cardio room and just want you to wipe down the machines with drenched dirty cloths that are reused...

Impolite staff members, inadequate cooling and ventilation, a struggling management, and a lack of amenities makes Momentum SST the perfect place for new visitors to stop by a few times... but not to sign up for a membership.

I've been climbing at Momentum Silver Street for over three years now. When I started climbing, the facility was maintained well and kept up with. As of now, there are a lot of issues that seem to be taking awhile to get resolved.

At the moment, about half of the gym is closed due to a pipeline leak that happened at the start of summertime. While this issue take a lot of resources to properly address and fix - management's responses have been lacking transparency and proper communication. Lately its been improving but regardless the issue comes down to a lack of initiative by management.

The HVAC systems are unreliable during the summertime. And, to add to that, they have been this way for at least the past two summers as well. If you were to measure the indoor ambient temperature, at its highest, you'll likely measure in the mid 80s. This is unacceptable for a gym and for a city like Houston, TX where the summer temperatures can reach close to 100F.

Right now Momentum is in the process of installing new padding due to the flooding event that was caused by the pipeline. There is a very unpleasant smell in the gym because of it. And, while I do not mind, and I will continue to climb through this installation process, it makes me wonder if the gym is considering the proper PPE, ventilation, and other engineering controls that are needed when glues and adhesives are being used in a gym especially when the HVAC systems are not working properly. I

Lastly, and this is an issue that has been happening for some time now, some of the staff members including some of the route setters, are very unprofessional when addressing and responding to the concerns of customers. Instead of acknowledging and respecting criticism, Momentum staff responds with snarky comments and gets very defensive. This is unacceptable for a business that charges nearly $90.00 a month for a membership.

This is the only gym that is convenient enough for me and a lot of others to go to consistently. I already drive 30-45 minutes three times a week to get to this gym. If I could go to another gym that is just as close, I would. But, for now, I can't.

So why then do I still climb at Momentum SST? If I have these concerns shouldn't I cancel my membership and seek business elsewhere? It's because Momentum SST is conveniently placed, the gym, when it's managed properly and when the facility is running well, offers a a lot of vertical space, and the community is wonderful. A majority of the staff also makes climbing at Momentum great. These employees deserve to be recognized for their hard work, their friendliness, and their willingness to get along with the community. They are incredibly patient, friendly, and funny. And a lot of them I consider to...