MEZZANINE FLOOR
CLIP N' CLIMB

Clip n’ Climb are the original creators of the fun climbing concept worldwide. Their brightly coloured climbing challenges are synonymous with the Clip n’ Climb experience and with climbing centres in over 50 countries worldwide, they are the international market leaders.

Invented in Christchurch, New Zealand by John Targett and Tim Wethey, Clip n’ Climb’s first centre opened there in 2005 and since then they have grown worldwide and also worked with Christchurch based engineers, Holmes Consulting, to develop innovative auto belay climbing technology, such as the Belaymate and Trublue.

The Belaymate connection device for climbers is a system that reduces the need for close supervision from staff whilst at the same time increasing climber security. This allows climbers to simply concentrate on clipping in and climbing. Whilst the Trublue auto belay was designed in 2007 and has completely transformed the way climbing centres operate today.

The new premises in Garforth is one of the 80+ centres within the UK and in this particular premises they required a mezzanine floor to house cafe facilities along with an office and training room. So Michelle Manson, the Director of the new Clip & Climb facility needed a mezzanine floor and fit out specialist that could design and fit out the new premises to their requirements, before they moved in.

‘In terms of the actual building itself, there was nothing inside it when I first identified it. So it was a complete shell, I had some ideas of how I wanted that to look moving forward, which certainly involved parts of what we’ve got now, but Nexus have really helped me in developing that.’ – Michelle Manson, Director, Clip n’ Climb.

Michelle and Clip n’ Climb worked with two companies during this project. Company Name to install the climbing equipment, whilst we implemented all other aspects, from the mezzanine floor and cafe facilities through to all lighting and plumbing requirements.

Clip n’ Climb required facilities to accommodate the parents whilst their children were climbing and to also have the ability to provide food and drinks on site. The cafe area on top of the mezzanine needed to be able to accommodate both regular visitors and large scale parties at the same time.

Therefore we had to design a large enough seating area, but at the same time create a large enough food preparation area to service the number of visitors. The facilities we’ve provided allow Clip n’ Climb to create food and drinks such as pizzas, panini’s, coffees and cold drinks.

Below the mezzanine floor, they needed an office and front desk to welcome visitors and also a room dedicated to hosting the numerous parties that Clip n’ Climb host throughout the year. Rounding out the required ground floor facilities were new WC facilities and a storeroom.

As the warehouse was completely empty when Michelle took on the building, they also needed us to provide all power, data, plumbing and lighting requirements throughout. This included a suspended ceiling below the mezzanine complete with PIR lighting and above the new cafe facilities we installed pendant lights to give the space a vibrant, modern feel.

‘I went online and googled fit out companies with a mezzanine speciality and I filled in info requests for three different organisations and within ten minutes, I actually got a call back from Zak at Nexus, which impressed me to start with because I didn’t get a call back at all from the other two companies.’ 

‘From then I started to work with Lee, who is one of the designers at Nexus. He worked with me for a number of months and I’m sure he was pulling his hair out for part of that, because I kept changing my mind and wanting different things, but he was so patient and clearly very experienced in what he does.’

‘The Project Manager on the ground, a chap called Simon, was also absolutely outstanding. Again, nothing was too much trouble. But it’s not just the Project Manager and the designing team, I think also the workmen and the teams that work with Nexus are also as accommodating. They worked out of hours to get the job done, I can’t praise them enough.’

‘As with all projects, I think towards the end, you can feel the pressure. We were working towards the 13th December, we were opening on the 14th and what really impressed me was the real hands on deck atmosphere. Even one of the Director’s, Mathew came down and helped out and he was working here all weekend. They really cared enough, to get it finished in time and really pulled out all the stops.’ – Michelle Manson, Director, Clip n’ Climb Garforth