FINANCIAL DISTRICT — A longtime boxing gym is being forced to hang up its gloves.
Trinity Boxing Club, known for its varied and dedicated members — whether professional fighters, neighborhood regulars or celebrities — is shuttering at the end of the month, after being hit with a rent hike.
“It just breaks my heart,” Martin Snow, Trinity’s owner, said. “Our motto here is ‘fight the good fight’ — we’ll keep fighting, but we can’t do it here anymore.”
The gym's last day open is Sept. 30.
Snow said his new landlord told him he’d have to pay $60,000 a month, double his current rent, to stay in his 110 Greenwich St. space — a price that’s not feasible for the Brooklyn native.
“I don’t blame the guy, I know Downtown is hot now for real estate,” he said. “But there should be some kind of help, some kind of concession for the businesses that built up this neighborhood — one by one we’re being forced out by higher rents.”
Snow's landlord did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Snow won an eviction fight with his previous landlord after he sued and the case was settled last year — but then his building was sold and the rent hike was too much to surmount.
“It’s been a tough go the last couple of years,” Snow said. “I love this space, I love being on the corner and having big windows so people can stop and watch, or walk in and say hello — but we’ll have to find someplace else.”
Snow, a former boxer, launched the gym, which sits a block from the World Trade Center, in 2004.
The ground floor space is a familiar one to neighbors who pass by its massive windows, where it’s easy to catch a glimpse of a sparring session in the ring, or a fervid workout with a punching bag.
“We’re like a family here,” Snow said. “Whether you’re a lawyer, an accountant, or anything else, here, we train you to really be a fighter — and we take that to heart.”
Snow, who also launched a Trinity gym in Los Angeles, said he's still searching for a new home in the city, but finding the right spot in the Financial District is starting to seem impossible.
"We were here after 9/11, we managed to survive financial downturns, we rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy, and I even fought off an eviction," Snow said. "But now, after all of that, it's the high rent that's keeping us from staying."
"We want to make a place that great, and we will again," he added. "But it might take some time."
