Crossfit Gym Moves Post-Sandy Operations to Island Park

 Last October a judge ruled in favor of Dr. Sean Pastuch and Mike Abgarian in a nuisance lawsuit filed against the West End business partners by their neighbors, costing them $100,000 to fight. Days later, Hurricane Sandy destroyed their chiropractic/physical therapy office and crossfit gym.

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Thanks to their success in Long Beach, suggested by their often-overcrowded office-gym, at 901 W. Beech St., Pastuch and Abgarian last May took a lease on a considerably larger facility in Island Park, enabling them to transfer their operations after the storm. Despite having a plan B, though, they faced many obstacles. Sandy’s damages to Thrive and CrossFit King of the Beach were total and their insurance company paid out not even a penny.

“From the first day we started focusing on: how do we get back?” Pastuch said. “We didn’t take the time to mope about it.”

Prior to the storm their 900-square-food Long Beach gym boasted 196 members, a figure that dropped to about 90 when they started to charge memberships again in January at their Island Park facility, at 4454 Austin Blvd. in Island Park. Many remaining members helped make their new 4,000-square foot gym functional. They helped clean and painted everything that needed to be “prettied up,” as Pastuch put it. When their doors opened for a few hours, members flocked to the gym for a workout, as a way to restore some normalcy to their post-storm lives, after which they picked up a broom to sweep for an hour, Abgarian said.

“It’s unbelievable how many people from our community were devastated and went through the same thing, that they were able to come here and even give an effort to help clean up this place,” Abgarian added.

The partners also got support from crossfit gyms nationwide, from Long Island to Texas to California, who held fundraisers for them. Moreover, equipment companies donated brand new equipment, or they fixed their rusted and rotted barbells and rowing machines free of charge, which allowed them to open half a gym. And their local plumbers and contractors donated time and money to build their new facility, which they share with the physical therapy practice of Chris Ostling. Pastuch puts the total cost in value of all these contributions at more than $60,000, and his friends raised $4,500 for his office alone.

While he and Abgarian are still trying to work on a lease agreement with their landlord at their West End location, which they would re-open strictly as a gym with soundproof flooring, their membership is rising again near its pre-storm numbers, even though some 60 former members haven’t returned. Pastuch rebranded his chiropractor practice, calling it The Active Life, and the gym was renamed CrossFit King of Island Park. The gym has incorporated children’s programs in conjunction with the Long Beach Recreation Department, and the partners want to hold a significant crossfit event on the beach by summer’s end.

In addition to an insurance policy that didn’t cover for hurricanes, Pastuch acknowledges that he Abgarian, who have had to lived at their parents homes in Merrick since the storm, made many mistakes since they opened their West End office-gym in 2011, another of which is that the storefront was too small from the start.

“In that respect, as sick as it sounds, the storm was almost a gift,” he said, “because we got the opportunity to do things that we wouldn’t have done in the first place.”
 
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