Around the clock fitness comes to small town
 

wbir.com-If you want to workout inside, often you need to drive to a fitness facility. That drive can be an excuse to just not go.

A small town that no longer faces that obstacle.

Greenback is a community of about a thousand people in the heart of East Tennessee.

The traditional small town has a big city addition to downtown.

"We're a 24 hour facility. It's a key card entry facility," Melanie Graves said. "Once they get that key card they can come and go whenever they want. There's a little scanning system out there. And they literally come anytime day or night."

Melanie Graves and her husband Andrew own Quick Fitness 24/7. It is their second workout facility.

"We ended up buying a club in Maryville and then a year later, a year ago, we ended up opening a club in Greenback," she said.

The town reminds Melanie of where she grew up in Virginia.

"I think of it as the Virginia version of Tennessee's Greenback. When someone would venture out and put in a business nearby people were just really, really thrilled to have someone invest in the community and that's what we've done and the people here have been so awesome," she said.

It also seemed like a sound business decision after the response they got from clients in Maryville.

"We had a lot of existing customers that drove up from Madisonville, from Greenback, from Vonore, and we saw a need. People had mentioned why don't you put a club down south so we did and especially with the cost of gas and everything it just seemed like a no brainer and we fell in love with this building," she said.

Where people now work out mechanics once worked on cars.

It was a gas station in the 1940s then eventually became a carpentry shop and then a workout place.

Workers enjoy twenty four hour access.

"There's a bunch of factories in the area so we have people who work all kinds of shifts. So we have people who come in at 2 am, 3 am, 4 am. So there's people in here at all hours," she said.

They're keeping fit when it fits into their schedules.

"It has been tremendous and my only regret is we didn't do it sooner," she said.