Fitness Center Feasibility Study in the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD Metro Area

Baltimore gyms: tiny tickets and one named lender

If a feasibility study for a gym in Baltimore has to be sized from SBA's records, the first thing to note is how little these loans are. The median is $100,000, which is 0.39x what the category borrows at the national midpoint, and a quarter of the loans are $25,000 or less while the top quarter starts at $350,000. Across FY2017 to FY2026 SBA approved 122 fitness center loans in the area, adding up to $43.5 million. The area is 24 of 608 for the class, gyms take fourth place within the local mix, and 1.20x as a location quotient says gyms are a more visible part of Baltimore lending than of lending nationally. Franchise affiliation accounts for 32.8% of loans.

A program split that SBA does not print

For this cell SBA publishes neither the number of 7(a) loans nor the number of 504 loans, since each depends on a handful of loans or would make a small figure recoverable by subtraction. Neither count is zero and neither can be guessed from the other. The single lender named is Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company, shown with 71 loans worth $12.2 million, a record of what it holds in SBA's files and not a signal of what it will ask a gym owner. Anyone relying on this page should treat the lender picture as incomplete: other holders exist but fall below the publication threshold.

Where the loans sit and how the years ran

Baltimore County leads with 37 loans, then Harford with 23, Anne Arundel with 19, Howard with 17 and Carroll with 13. Annual approvals opened at 22 loans and $9.6 million in FY2017, shrank to 5 loans and $1.1 million in FY2022, and recovered to 18 loans in FY2026. Because recent years look so different from early ones, an applicant's study should lean on current local conditions and not on the full-period total.

Cancellations and the questions a study must answer

Of approvals made in FY2017 to FY2024, 15.8% or more were cancelled before the money moved, a floor. Baltimore's cancellation ceiling and its charge-off rate are suppressed for lack of loans. Counties join the area only if their names match the 2023 metro map. For a new gym the study has to ask how many members the trade area can really supply, which clubs already compete within a short drive, what rent per member the lease implies, how much the equipment and fit-out will cost against a small loan, whether monthly dues can carry repayment through the slow months, and what a lender would value if the club failed, which for a leasehold is mostly the equipment.