Sierra plastic pullers rejoice! The biggest little city is about to be home to the tallest climbing wall in the world. A monster 164 foot outdoor climbing wall is under construction at CommRow, a new urban adventure resort opening this fall in downtown Reno.
CommRow will be a non-gaming non-smoking hotel and entertainment center located adjacent to the famous Reno Arch in the old Fitzgeralds casino building on Virgina Street. In addition to the massive climbing wall on the front of the building, this new school urban complex is slated to feature a 7,000 sq ft indoor bouldering arena, two small music venues, eleven healthy micro-eateries and a couple hundred pet friendly hotel rooms…and that’s just the start of CommRow’s plans.
CommRow Concept Drawing. All photos – http://www.facebook.com/CommRow
Though it may sound like a pipe dream, construction on CommRow is not only well underway, they are about to open the doors! According to a recent @CommRow twitter announcement, CommRow will open some elements of the facility at the end of September followed by a grand opening celebration on October 1st, 2011.
No word on how much of the outdoor climbing wall will be completed by the grand opening but the balcony that accesses the base of the wall is up so that’s a good sign.
The wall is being built by the climbing wall masters at Entre-Prises and will top out 197 feet off the street. As you’ll notice in the profile drawing, the wall will be fairly wide (approx 17 belay stations) with two multi-pitch extensions rising to the top of the building. One side of the wall will also feature a regulation 15-meter speed climbing course.
The cavernous 7,000 sq ft bouldering arena will be indoors on the second floor. The proposed layout for this zone also looks pretty rad.
Hiding somewhere within the bottom three floors of CommRow will be two music venues – reported to be 150 and 450 capacity spaces.
Hotel rooms will be on the floors above with 136 rooms scheduled to open in the spring of 2012. CommRow has said the hotel rooms will be clean, pet friendly but no frills. If demand warrants they may also open another 211 rooms and fill out the 16 story tower at a later date.
Moving on to more unofficial plans, CommRow has their eye on developing the top of their adjacent parking garage to include multiple skate/bmx parks, an outdoor bouldering garden, a rooftop restaurant and possibly some zip lines that cross Virginia Street. No official plans for this “Adventure Deck” have been submitted to the City of Reno yet but CommRow has worked up a concept drawing of what the garage-top zone might look like.
The developers of CommRow have stated that they hope to draw consistent traffic from UNR students, as well as attract major climbing and adventure sport competitions. Here’s hoping as it would be pretty cool to see a speed climbing comp going down on the streets of Reno. Here’s one from Chamonix:
Going with the climbing skillz theme, CommRow has also mentioned hosting slackline competitions. Here’s one from Munich:
Regardless of what events headline at CommRow, the new climbing walls and music venues alone are reason enough to get stoked on this forthcoming local project. And with the potential to monkey up the side of one of the tallest buildings in town, CommRow will no doubt be the best place to get high in all of Reno, naturally of course!
The official CommRow website will drop in August but until then you can keep up with their latest happenings on facebook. If it sounds like a place you might want to work check out CommRow’s jobs website.