You can soon get high in Gowanus!
The owner of a Dumbo-based rock climbing gym plans to open up a new wall at the northern tip of Brooklyn’s Nautical Purgatory, where it will fit right in with the neighborhood’s already unconventional sports.
“Gowanus has become a hub for unique, non-traditional forms of fitness and recreation — including circus arts, archery, and axe throwing,” said Mike Wolfert, who runs the Cliffs in Brooklyn Bridge Park and elsewhere in the five boroughs. “We aim to bring an exceptional new rock climbing experience to the mix.”
Wolfert inked a deal on July 18 to lease a Nevins Street lot for 25 years, once the 40,000 square foot outpost is built — which is slightly smaller than the new massive Chelsea Piers gym in America’s Downtown, but more than four times the size of the Bridge Park outpost.
The Gowanus Cliffs — which Wolfert says will be the largest climbing gym in the Empire State — will also boast more traditional fitness equipment, saunas, and a store, plus it will offer training, group fitness, and yoga classes.
Wolfert — who was cuffed in 2013 for paying off a city official so he could speed up the opening of one of his facilities in Greenpoint, right across from that neighborhood’s fetid creek — is waiting for all of the necessary permits before breaking ground on the Gowanus building between Douglass and Butler streets, right next to Thomas Greene Park, according to a spokesman for The Cliffs.
Locals can start scaling the Nevins Street rock wall and work out in its new gym facility in 2020, after $18,000,000 worth of construction, according to the spokesman.
