Nosotros Rock Climbing Gym Closing in Lakewood, But Owner Hopes to Relocate With Community Help

What many climbing enthusiasts seem to love, almost as much as surmounting walls, is that climbing is always much more than just climbing.

For some, it’s an affordable alternative to the American West. A strategic, rewarding way to building hand strength and muscle mass. A full-body exercise. A mental struggle as much as a physical one.

But for Peter Stancato, like it is for many, climbing culture always has deep ties with a local community that seems to have each other’s backs.

“When you do a climbing route, you can fail a million times,” Stancato, the owner of Nosotros Rock Climbing Gym in Lakewood, told Scene. “And then you finally do it, and everybody has the same face: Nice job. And that’s really cool.”

A vibe that is currently under threat for Stancato and his hundreds of regulars. The 36-year-old gym founder said that the owner of Nosotros’ sole space, the basement of a church on Detroit Avenue, is selling the building. Stancato has to be out of the building by the end of October.

Starting this week, Stancato has kicked off a fundraising campaign in an attempt to relocate Nosotros from the church basement where it’s been since 2017 to a slightly larger spot in Lakewood’s Screw Factory. All for a fraction of the cost it takes to build your typical climbing gym—$50,000, Stancato said.

Not millions?

“Well, because we’re building it ourselves,” he said. “I’m the general manager. I’m the builder. And we don’t need to depend on loans or investors.”

Whether or not Stancato is successful in what he predicted will be a sixty-day campaign, Nosotros’ possible closure puts a dent in an already fractured climbing scene here in Cleveland.

In 2023, a series of miffed investors sued Cleveland Rocks owner Kevin Wojton, alleging that he lied about the gym’s value and had defrauded them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both gyms’ absences—including two failed Nosotros expansions, in Downtown and Crocker Park—would leave only Climb Cleveland in Tremont and Shaker Rocks in Shaker Heights.

It’s hard to find the sort of community he built at Nosotros, however.

“Some have said that Nosotros saved their life,” its website reads. “How do you help someone with a bad addiction? By learning their name, asking questions, and making introductions.”

Maureen Murphy, 34, included. A regular since 2018, Murphy said that scaling all the colorful routes at Nosotros led inevitably to her signing up for a 24/7 membership. (And donating $100 this week to keeping her favorite gym afloat.)

“I’m a mother of one, I’m a small business owner,” Murphy said. “And there’s no other place in the world I can walk in and just be alone and at peace. Where nothing else seems to matter.”

A kind of drink-the-Kool Aid feeling Stancato gets. After climbing with a wedding party in 2011, the Parma native decided to start Nosotros, a named recommended to him by his wife, after just “climbing three times.” He played rugby at Kent State, but seemed to adore climbing’s lack of big ego: “People in climbing, they’re vested,” he said. “They take actual pleasure in your success.”

Jonathan Glass Riley, the pastor that owns the building on Detroit did not respond to a call for comment. Stancato suggested that the new owner will be putting a nursing home in Nosotros’ place.

To raise the money needed to build new walls and buy new pads, Stancato is offering tickets to obstacle courses, movie nights and “team-building clubs,” which he said are par for the course for his usual fans.

“I mean, you have some people that just embody this attitude: ‘Nosotros or nowhere,’” he added. “Who knows if that’s actually true, if we were to close for good. But that’s kind of how it’s been for the past seven years.”

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