A health and fitness centre at the heart of a community is set to reopen on July 4.
Rossi’s in North Walsham will be reopening its gym and swimming pool with social distancing measures in place, provided it gets the final go ahead from the government.
The reopened Rossi’s will see gym-goers allocated slots to use both the pool and gym facilities with a deep clean to be carried out after every session.
Sport and fitness manager, Liam Killington said: “Lockdown week evolved really quickly, because guidelines were changing everyday, so initially we cut our opening hours and stepped up the cleaning. Then on the Friday we found out we were going to have to close and literally that night we shut and we haven’t opened our doors since.
“It’s been a tough few months but hopefully we’re coming out of the other side stronger.”
During lockdown the centre has been keeping its community together through Facebook fitness classes and a podcast passing on tips and advice that staff would have been giving in person had the gym been open.
Jon Goodyear, head of operations said: “There’s been a good uptake with online stuff we’ve got a good membership base and we didn’t want to put a charge in for that, the main reason is that we wanted to keep the community.
“There’s a massive community feel around Rossi’s and what we do and at this time more than ever we wanted to make sure that people could communicate as we’ve got a lot of elderly members and also to give them a contact if they need anything, it’s something really positive which has come out of this horrible situation.”
Mr Goodyear said online classes, which have attracted over 650 members, would continue for some time, as the company does not yet know when it will be able to resume its classes in person.
Owner Bruce Rossi said: “It’s a good way of reaching out to members, who probably do want to hear from me in this instance, they want to find out what we’re doing and they’re very concerned as to how they can come back and when they could come back.”
Those wishing to take part in the free classes and listen to the podcast can do so on Rossi’s Facebook page.
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