IMAX-Soul Cycle Hybrid Planned for Brooklyn Waterfront

Image via Google Maps

A beautiful old brick building on the Brooklyn waterfront is being eyed as the future host vessel for an epic collision of entertainment and fitness trends.

IMAX Fit LLC, a subsidiary of IMAX, has applied for a “special permit to allow the operation of a physical culture establishment” — aka, a ”spin studio with movie screen” — on the first floor of 135 Plymouth St. in DUMBO, according to a memo from Brooklyn’s Community Board 2.

DNAinfo reports that the “SoulCycle-like gym” planned for 135 Plymouth would contain ”tiered rows of stationary bicycles that would face the [IMAX] screen, which would play original content created by IMAX and its partners.” The company’s chief business development officer tells the local news site that Brooklyn’s IMAX gym would be the first of its kind in the country.

The 28,000-square-foot industrial building that would host it, reportedly dating back to the late 1880s, is located on the north side of Plymouth Street between Adams and Pearl. (Placing it, quite literally, down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.)

Back in January, the real-estate broker in charge of selling the place said: “Call it industrial chic. It’s a great spot with high ceilings and lots of skylights but it needs somebody that gets it.”

The building was once home to the largest factory in the world — a paper recycling operation, according to the New York Times, whose signage still dots the property.

The tenants in the lofts above the abandoned factory have also made a name for themselves as members of ”an unusually tight” artist community, according to the Times.

“That building is the original art commune, a micro-community in the bigger Dumbo community,” Doreen Gallo, executive director of the Dumbo Neighborhood Alliance, told the Times.

We’ve reached out to Gallo for her take on the new IMAX gym planned for the building’s first floor.

Members of Community Board 2’s Land Use Committee, though, have shown almost unanimous support for the project: They recently voted 10-2 in favor of sending IMAX’s special permit application to a full board vote on Dec. 9.

“I am unclear, personally, why two people opposed it,” CB2 District Manager Robert Perris told Patch. “No one came out and testified against it at the public hearing. I have not heard [any opposition] from anyone in the community.”

Asked how he thought the art commune upstairs would take to an IMAX fitness experience booming down below, Perris replied: “I can’t speak to a culture clash, but I can speak to the issue of noise. They are going to build a box within a box to keep the noise contained.”

James Seward, a 36-year-old artist who’s lived in the building for 10 years, told DNAinfo he wasn’t opposed to the concept.

“I think it’s good for the neighborhood,” he said. “It sounds kind of cool.”