Just a year after opening, St. Louis’ first-ever floatation center is expanding to a second location in the mid-St. Louis County area.
F.LO.A.T.—which stands for “For. LOving. Antigravity. Timelessness”—is scheduled to open by the end of July in Westport, co-owner Kevin McCulloch tells SLM. The new location will offer five floating areas, one more than the original storefront in downtown St. Louis.
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“We’re excited to continue to bring floating to more people,” McCulloch says. “I think there are still so many people who don’t know it exists.”
(Wondering what it’s like to float? SLM’s staff writer tried it out and wrote about her experience here: Experiencing F.LO.A.T.)
Accessibility is the main factor driving F.LO.A.T.’s expansion to Maryland Heights, a central hub for commuters in St. Louis and St. Charles. For now, clients drive in from as far away as Lake St. Louis for a 90-minute float at the downtown location.
“We felt that was a nice junction point where a lot of people could get to it very easily,” McCulloch says. A third and fourth location are already in the works. “Our plan is to continue to open centers as long as the community supports their existence. Each one is its own little adventure.”
See also: F.LO.A.T. Your Stress Away
The expansion will also allow F.LO.A.T. to offer more services at the same time. The Locust Street location is open seven days a week, sometimes for 14 hours per day, but there’s still a weeks-long wait for appointments, preventing clients with immediate needs, especially pregnant women and cancer patients, from timely access to the center’s pain and stress-relieving services.
The backlog “is great for business, but at the same time, it tells us there are a lot of people who want to come in but aren’t able to,” McCulloch says. “There’s a lot of need out there for healing, so we just want to continue to help people find that.”
Just because F.LO.A.T. is opening in the county doesn’t mean it’s abandoning the city. McCulloch, who grew up in the county and now lives in the city, says owners chose to open first on Locust Street “for very specific reasons.”
“We really believe in the city, so it was important for us to have a place in the city to be part of supporting the development,” McCulloch says. “In other areas, things felt more or less defined, and we’d just be putting ourselves into something that was already in existence. There’s a little bit more creation here.”
For most St. Louisans, floating is a new experience, so opening the first floating center on an up-and-coming block made sense for F.LO.A.T.
“Part of what we like about Locust is it’s not a block or street people have been on before,” McCulloch says. “We really liked the idea of people coming to this place to have a new experience and also be in a new environment.”
As for the new location in Westport, McCulloch says it’ll be very similar to F.LO.A.T.’s downtown space.
“We want to focus on floating. There are a lot of places that will get into all types of things. We’re going to hold on to that one focus.”
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at [email protected] or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
