Historic Bank Building in New Lowell Transformed Into Community Yoga and Wellness Studio
A historic bank vault in New Lowell got a second life as The Vault, a new yoga and wellness studio from the Merrill family.
New Lowell's newest wellness destination arrived with some serious architectural character. The Vault, a yoga and wellness studio that opened its doors in the small Ontario community, made its home inside a repurposed historic bank building, giving practitioners a genuinely distinctive space to flow, stretch, and connect.
The studio is owned and operated by Lee and Lauren Merrill, who brought in Kendal Merrill to help shape the venture. Kendal brings direct industry experience to the project, currently running Strong Studio in Orangeville, which gave the family a working model for building a community-centered fitness space from the ground up.
The decision to take on a historic bank building rather than a conventional storefront or strip-mall unit says something about the ambitions behind The Vault. Repurposing heritage structures for wellness use has become a genuine trend in the yoga world, where the texture and atmosphere of a space matter as much as the square footage. Vaulted ceilings, original stonework, and the quiet gravitas of a building that once held a town's savings translate surprisingly well into a yoga environment, grounding practitioners in something older than their practice.
New Lowell is a small community, and the Merrill family positioned The Vault explicitly as a community hub rather than just a fitness facility. That framing matters. Studios that anchor themselves in neighborhood identity, particularly in smaller towns where dedicated wellness spaces are scarce, tend to become gathering points well beyond their scheduled class times.
With Strong Studio already established in Orangeville under Kendal Merrill's direction, the family now has a two-studio footprint across the region, with each location serving a distinct community. The Vault opened on March 13, 2026, bringing yoga and wellness programming to New Lowell inside walls that have been part of the town's story for generations.
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