The 2024 Paris Olympics amped up excitement worldwide over newly debuted sports like climbing, surfing and skateboarding.
While the competitions may be over, Mike Palmer, owner of The Knot Climbing Gym in downtown Gainesville, hopes to build off of this buzz. Palmer plans to redevelop a former Regional Transit System maintenance building into a climbing, skateboarding and surfing hub to be opened in the next couple of years.
The redevelopment will feature a new climbing gym, skate park and shop, restaurant and a standing surf wave, a structure replicating ocean waves.
The former RTS building, located in Downtown Gainesville near Depot Park, is owned by the federal government but maintained by the Gainesville City Commission. It has sat vacant since the opening of the new RTS facility, located at 34 SE 13th Road, and is now used for overflow parking for the Depot Park area.
In 2015, Palmer and his business partner, Mitchell Eadens, bought the Gainesville Rock Climbing Gym, which had closed due to structural issues, and redeveloped it into The Knot.
Upon its opening in 2020, The Knot experienced an unprecedented amount of customers, Palmer said.
“After about six months of business, we were at where we thought we would be three years from opening,” he said. “Now we’re essentially double what we thought we would even be in this building.”
As a result, Palmer knew the climbing community needed something bigger and better, he said.
Thus started the years-long process of finding and securing a place to expand into.
Originally, finding a new location was difficult, as student housing developers scouted the same properties as he did for a new gym, he said.
However, at a city meeting, the words “unused property” piqued his interest, and he immediately got to planning.
Around that same time in 2022, the city introduced an unsolicited proposal program, which allowed citizens to propose development projects to the city commission for consideration.
During the pilot months of the program, Palmer brought the idea to redevelop the RTS facility into a climbing gym to the city, and after review, commissioners decided the idea would move forward into a formal proposal policy, he said.
It wasn’t until the formal proposal policy that Palmer said he started to heavily consider expanding into a multi-sport hub instead of a climbing gym alone.
“Something everybody’s been asking for in Gainesville for 25 years is a cool skate park downtown,” he said.
The site’s previous layout inspired him, he said. The buildings were perfect for what he had planned. “One of the other buildings I looked at, I was like, ‘Man, this building looks just like a restaurant to me.’”
From there, the plans just took off based on niche, newly introduced Olympic sports, he said.
“I was like, ‘Well, so rock climbing is in the Olympics, skateboarding is in the Olympics, what else is in the Olympics? Oh yeah — surfing,’” Palmer said, “And so it kind of spawned around that these are all three new Olympic sports.”
He said he hopes the new development will bring tourists off the interstate and into the city as well as draw in student surfers.
“You want to learn to surf in a controlled environment,” he said. “So I was thinking that might actually draw people from I-75 to downtown and give them a reason to go past Celebration Pointe or Butler Plaza.”
The Gainesville City Commission hopes for the same, Commissioner Bryan Eastman said.
“We’ll continue to work with them to make sure that it fits in well to Depot Park,” Eastman said, “We’ll really try to make it an extension and expansion of the great investments we’ve made over there.”
The idea also excites Gainesville residents looking for a new spot to practice their sport — or learn a new one.
John Reger, a 37-year-old Gainesville resident and long-time rock climber, looks forward to the new members of the climbing community it will bring — specifically at the Olympic level.
A bigger space will bring opportunities to host regional, divisional and national rock climbing competitions, Reger said.
The larger space will also give citizens a chance to become “weekend warriors,” he said. The Knot currently operates in a members-only capacity, and with this new facility, non-members can enjoy the fun of rock climbing for a day or weekend.
“We can open the doors wider and have space to accommodate people who have never rock climbed and come in day one and be welcomed and instructed on how to rock climb and enjoy our sport,” Reger said.
The rock climbing community is one like no other, he said.
“It’s more diverse than it’s ever been,” he said. “It really brings in all shapes and sizes. Every type of person can go in there and be completely at home.”
The next steps for the site include finalizing details, design work and going through the rezoning and permitting process, which could all take several months.
Construction is set to start Fall 2025 and the new development is set to open in 2026.
Contact Kairi Lowery at klowery@alligator.org. Follow her on X @kairiloweryy.
Kairi Lowery is a third-year journalism major and a metro general assignment reporter for The Alligator. When she's not writing you can find her lounging on the beach with a book or collecting vinyls.
