Skywood Freshwater: Popular indoor climbing centre set to be replaced by 24-hour gym
A rent hike has forced a popular northern beaches’ indoor climbing centre to look for a new home as a 24-hour a day gym looks set to move into the premises instead.
Manly
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A popular northern beaches’ indoor climbing centre, which is closing after being hit with a rent increase, is set to be replaced by a 24-hour gym.
Skywood Climbing has confirmed the business that opened in the Freshwater Village in 2019 will shut later this year.
But its owner and manager, world cup climber Yossi Sundakov-Krumins, has reassured his clients — about 100 people a day use Skywood in Moore Rd — that he was seeking planning permission to open a “bigger and better” climbing and bouldering centre at Brookvale.
A separate development application to modify planning consent to allow Anytime Fitness to move into the premises will go before the Northern Beaches Planning Panel next week.
But that proposal has angered some locals who fear the gym, which wants to extend the opening hours to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will be too noisy.
In a written submission to Northern Beaches Council, Leonie Phillips wrote that the gym would create extra traffic, noise and parking problems.
“Freshwater Village is busy enough through the day and part of the evening. We do not need a 24/7 business operation,” she said.
“People that are working out ( in a gym) like to have the music on high levels to bump up their energy. Freshwater village is located in a bowl and noise reverberates through the area.”
Lauren Richardson reckoned noise would also be created by patrons arriving at leaving the gym.
“There will be people chatting as they arrive or leave,” she said.
“There will be cars and motorbikes starting up. Doors slamming. People walking past the residences have no idea how their voices carry.”
Sundakov-Krumins, who has represented Australia at international climbing competitions including a World Cup, said Skywood had a seven-year lease on the property, but the agreement had options for annual rent increases and for him not to renew each year.
He said the landlord, described in previous media reports as a “Sydney investor”, had exercised their option to up the rent.
In a Facebook post for his clients, Sundakov-Krumins wrote that it was the “the end of an era for Skywood, but the beginning of an exciting new one”.
He has lodged a DA to allow Skywood Climbing to fit out a building in Old Pittwater Rd at Brookvale.
Sundakov-Krumins told this masthead that the re-location to a bigger centre would give him the chance to offer more, and different, climbing experiences.
“We expect that a lot of our clients will come with us to Brookvale,” he said.
“I’m hoping that if our DA is approved, we’ll only have to close for between eight to 10 weeks, which allows us time to take our climbing walls down and move them over to Brookvale in the latter half of the year.
“We’ve struggled a little bit with the size at Freshwater.
“In the climbing game, if the space is bigger you get to add more and different angles of walls for people to get experiences on. There will be something new for everyone.
“We’ll be growing, not shrinking.”
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