Meeting Challenges with Staff, Community Support: Cortlandt Business Profile

Every local business has a story worth sharing with the community. The plan behind this series at Patch is to shine the spotlight on all our favorite local businesses, and to learn a little about the ones we may not know that well.

This is as much about supporting local businesses as it is about celebrating the places and faces that make our community special. Click here to get to a simple form where local business owners can answer a few quick questions to be part of this ongoing feature.

Our spotlight today is on the Savastanos.

Business: Gymnastics City
Owners: Vinny & Anita Savastano
Website: gymnasticscity.com
Address: 2121 Crompond Rd. (Rt 202) Cortlandt Manor, NY 10567

How did you come up with the name?
My husband Vinny was born in the Bronx and we wanted a name so everyone would know we taught gymnastics thus: Gymnastics City

Why choose that location? Why start a business in this town?
Our gymnastics school started across the street from the Beach Shopping in an old gym which was used for the old St. Peter’s School. We were there for 4 years, but our lease was up they were building condo’s there. (Jacobs Hill Condos).

We then moved to Mohegan Lake and were there for 10 years, we lost our lease so we wanted to stay in the area where most of our students came from. Our good friend John Tartaglione was a project engineer and told us about the old Ethan Allen Furniture store. We thought it was a great location being right on Rt. 202 in Cortlandt Manor. We knew Cordtlandt Manor would be very receptive having a new business in their community serving kids. We thought it was a perfect fit. We did quite a bit of renovations having to raise the roof for our training for gymnastics. We ended up with a 15,000 sq.ft. air condidtioned state of the art facility in which we are very proud.

Briefly, what business are you in?
Gymnastics Instruction for children 18 months through high school, Competitive Gymnastics and Cheer Teams, and Birthday Party’s.

What’s the most difficult moment or challenge you’ve faced as a business owner?
The most difficult moment was when we found out our landlord was putting in her own gymnastics school in the same location we were in Mohegan Lake for 10 years. We never backed away from a challenge and competition is good. But we had a lot on the line.

The day we found out there would be another gymnastics school practically in our backyard, we had just remortgaged our home to pay for more unexpected renovations to our building. Now there was a chance we could have lost everything if this business didn’t work out; our home and our business, plus we had kids in college. Also, the loss of jobs for all our employees. It was a very scary prospect. But, I told my husband my motto: NEVER,NEVER, GIVE UP! We knew we had a great program, with our terrific staff and our business knowledge we hoped we would make it through. We had many, many people rooting for us to succeed.

Were there any challenges that made you second guess your decision to be an entrepreneur?
That above experience at the time did make us pause and we said, we could have walked away in the sunset and could have enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle.

But we loved what we were doing and knew we made an impact on so many kids life. We were not ready to give it up that easily.

What’s been your favorite moment or proudest achievement since opening?
Probably the day we had the ribbon cutting ceremony at our new facility. Many of our friends, family and supporters were there and we were very proud to have the Town Supervisor, Linda Pugliese welcome us into the Cortlandt Manor community. It was a lot of blood, sweat, and a few tears, but we accomplished what we set out to do. We built a state of the art faciltiy, with an excellent staff and all the equipment needed for our gymnasts from pre schoolers through all our competitive teams. We were very proud of our brand new facility and even received an award by the Town of Cortlandt for our Beautification of our building and land.

What’s the most innovative idea your employees or customers have had that you put into practice?
We established our website to keep everyone informed of what is happening at Gym City. We take pride in letting our customers
understand our philosphy and to keep them informed. We want our families to take pride in this gymnastics program, so we love telling them when our gymnasts or cheerleaders do great at competitions. We also try to inform them if we are doing any fund raising for a special cause for the community.

How do you deal with difficult customers?
We have learned so much from our customers. We always try to listen to their questions or concerns. If we can improve on something we will always try. It makes us better. Most of the time the customer is right!

How does your business give back or get involved in the community?
In many ways, we are very visible so many of the local schools are always fund raising and we always try to give as much support as we can.

We also support many of the local groups for funds for cancer, Guiding Eyes for the Blind, cubscouts, girl scouts. The Lions Club. Every year we have a “Cartwheel-a-thon” to help raise money for the Maria Ferari Childrens Hosptial. In the past we have raised money for specific families, one family lost everything in a house fire, we raised funds for them. Another family had a child with Leukemia, we helped her. Our biggest fund raiser was for the 911 World Trade Center. Through the years we try to help
as many people in the community as we can.