Rocktown Looks For New Home

Rocktown Climbing Gym near Bricktown has to find a new home. 

So does a youth non-profit mentoring program that’s also out of the 100-year-old renovated grain elevator for the past 13 years. 

Rocktown Youth Mentoring uses rock-climbing to connect with kids with difficult backgrounds. 

They work with about 100 local disadvantaged kids each week, and since 2003, they’ve helped more than a thousand children and teens. 

But the Bricktown Climbing Gym has lost its lease, and is being replaced by a “for profit” climbing gym, after the first of the year. 

Steve Charles is the executive director Rocktown Youth Mentoring. 

He said he learned about the change less than a week ago.

“We talk about grit, we talk about perseverance all the time, and doing things with dignity, so it wouldn’t be real responsible for us to be jerks right now. That’s not what we’re about,” he said. 

Charles said he’s been humbled by offers of help from the nearby Boathouse District and the YMCA. 

“Our kids have faces and names. They’re real people and we don’t want to abandon them,” he said.