Dear Beloved Wild Light Community,
We are thrilled to announce that we are pursuing an option to move and expand the studio! We have explored this option twice in the last three years. Both times, life has given us a firm response of, “just wait, it’s not time yet.” We truly believe that this potential new home at 810 W 3rd Ave is exactly the thing that life has been asking us to wait for with you!
There are more than a few reasons behind this potential move and expansion. Our current building is up for sale and we are being asked to sign a long-term lease that is not in our best interests as a community. You may be aware that we are only able to use one of the women-identified showers at the moment. Additionally, the back wall and floor by the second yoga room door has been exposed for over 3 months waiting to be fixed. Our liability insurance company has investigated and found that we are not responsible for any of the water leakage and resulting damages that have occurred. After much delay, the company that owns the building has just recently opened an insurance claim and intends to fight our insurance company, claiming that we are responsible for these damages, which means the repairs could take quite a bit longer to complete. All of this, amid additional concerns, has left us feeling less than confident about the integrity, care and concern that we are being shown as a community and as their tenants..
Building concerns aside, Wild Light Yoga Center is also ready for the next phase of growth and evolution. Our current men-identified changing room is far too small. At the time the studio was built in 2003, it made sense to have a smaller men-identified changing room as more women-identified people were practicing yoga. 17 years later, we have over 40% male-identified clientele and this changing room no longer fits our needs.
Furthermore, our current Moon Room is too small for both our non-heated yoga classes, as well as our teacher training programs. We believe the size of this room is inhibiting the growth of classes such as Ashtanga, Restorative and Kundalini, and a larger space would encourage more clients to attend. We’d also love to be able to offer more to our community as far as specialty classes (for instance: Yoga for Addiction Recovery, Yoga for Eating Disorders, and Adaptive Yoga, just to name a few). The current Moon Room is stunting our growth in this capacity. As a teacher training studio, having a larger space with more room for experiential education and equipment would deepen the experience we’re able to offer to our trainees.
Lastly, our current heater in the Sun Room has functioned rather splendidly for 17 years. It’s also old and it has become harder and harder to locate parts for this heater when it needs repairs. On top of that, it is quite loud, which we have all just come to accept. Ideally, we are in need of a brand-new heating system, which we would be able to build in a new space.
So, all of this brings us to the unique opportunity in front of us at the moment! We are currently pending on the purchase of a property in the Whiteaker at 810 W 3rd Ave. This property is owned by the New Life Apostolic Tabernacle Church. It is nearly twice the size of our present location, which gives us plenty of space for new, expanded changing rooms. On top of this, the proposed Moon Room is more than double the size of our current one, and the proposed Sun Room can hold more practitioners as well.
One of the unique things about this property is that it has residential zoning, and we will need to rezone it as a Neighborhood Center. Essentially this means that we can run the studio here, and we can also have space for neighborhood events and gatherings. The REACH Center near UO is one example of a building like this that they rezoned into a Neighborhood Center. Right now, the downstairs section of the building would house the Moon Room. Adjacent to this is a fully functional kitchen, which would be ideal for hosting community gatherings. We would like to put a bathroom down there so this whole area can be separate from the Sun Room and changing rooms on the floor above. This would also enable us to provide this space for various neighborhood and community events. In the end, our vision is to be a Eugene hub for health and wellness. This was part of the goal of our rebrand from Sweaty Ganesh Yoga to Wild Light Yoga Center – to become more than just a yoga studio: to become a center of community, vitality, well-being, education and transformation, and this building would help us become even more of just that.
City permitting takes about 4 months, so this will be an in-depth, step-by-step process over the next few months to get this property rezoned and also to get all our ducks in a row as far as the buildout plans and our buildout team. We're scheduled to close in early April as of right now, and that's subject to change based on the City's timeline. Joey is negotiating all of the real estate pieces of this, which has been a beautiful symbiosis of our professional worlds -- it’s not often you get to work side by side with your husband to build your dreams together. Both of us are working on the City rezoning and buildout. We would love your support at the Public Hearing that will take place in a few months as part of the rezoning process. We’d also love for the buildout to be a community-inspired transformation. If you have interest in being involved in this project with your expertise, skills, ideas, etc. with regard to the buildout, please email joey@windermere.com and jess@wildlightyogacenter.com. We would love to work with you throughout this transformation.
Thank you so much for your patience with us the last few years, particularly to those of you who were excited about the very first expansion plan into the Pizza Pipeline space next door to us. We will do everything in our power to manifest this vision so that we are able to offer you and the larger community something even more incredible than what we currently have.
So many of you walk into Wild Light and comment on how amazing the energy feels in here. That energy is because of each of you, our community members, who share, connect, sweat, laugh, and learn together each time you enter the studio. We are so grateful to every one of you, and we wouldn’t be here without you. Let’s expand our energy field together – it is time!!!
With the deepest love and gratitude,
Jess and Joey
