Cleveland Rocks Climbing Gym Founder Hit With More Legal Woes

In January, ten Northeast Ohioans who invested over the years in the Cleveland Rocks climbing gym in Ohio City filed a lengthy lawsuit alleging that owner Kevin Wojton defrauded them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

While that lawsuit remains ongoing, Wojton is now dealing with additional legal complaints.

According to two complaints filed in Cuyahoga County Courts, in February and June respectively, Wojton allegedly defrauded an investor and defaulted on $1.7 million in loans with Huntington Bank used for construction and equipment costs going back to 2019.

The investor lawsuit, filed by attorney Peter Pattakos on behalf of Melissa Renner, claims that she was duped into investing $50,000 into Cleveland Rocks in 2022, all based on impressions from Wojton that the gym was valued nearly six times more than it was in reality.

As of Friday morning, Pattakos told Scene that him and Wojton's attorneys have reached an agreement to settle the case. "He's agreed to pay my clients back," Pattakos said. "Mr. Wojton has agreed to pay Mrs. Renner the amount that he owes her. He's agreed to resolve the claims."

Wojton nor his lawyers responded to a request for comment from Scene.

According to Renner's lawsuit, Wojton "made representations about the financial circumstances of the gym and the business that were outright false, deliberately misleading, and materially deceptive in order to induce plaintiffs’ reliance upon those representations and accomplish the investment."

In June of 2023, Wojton approached Melissa Renner, who had been a Cleveland Rocks member for about a year, suggesting that she help use her expertise as a company owner to help keep the climbing gym afloat. They met twice. Melissa was offered "management decisions" and the title of CEO in exchange for that five figures.

After "badgering" her, contacting her "multiple times in a day," Melissa acquiesced. Come July, Melissa seemed to regret her offer. She found out, the complaint says, Cleveland Rocks' finances were "dire and dramatically worse" than what Wojton had communicated. There were unpaid bills and vendor invoices. (Including a $15,000 gas bill.) There were tax complications and three "serious" violations with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (mostly a miscommunication of fire hazards.) Moreover, Melissa had found out that Wojton's payroll estimates of an "unchanging $7,500 a month" were actually $11,000.

"The business was not profitable," the complaint reads.

In October 2023, Melissa, Chris, Wojton and three investors convened in an attempt to try and get Wojton to step away from a Cleveland Rocks subsidiary used to control shares. Confronted with another $650,000 in debt, with Cleveland Capital Partners, LLC, the founder allegedly gave the roundtable a non-answer about the money's origin. "He offered a vague claim that his mother had leant him this amount to start the initial business," the complain reads. "Wojton could not explain the debt to the plaintiffs' satisfaction," it added.

Meanwhile, Huntington Bank is seeking remedy from the $1.7 million in loans that Wojton has defaulted on.

An attorney for Huntington Bank declined to comment at length when contacted by Scene.

The lawsuits have pierced what seemed to be a community-shaping business from outside the walls of the Masonic Temple it occupied. Just as it did Wojton's image as a hip financier and Cleveland prodigal son vowing to help revive a neighborhood with a trendy concept.

"These are people I consider friends," Wojton told Scene in January, regarding the list of defendants in the first lawsuit. "People who I go to for advice. People who have been close advisors and mentors in the project."

"And the resulting kind of disinformation is shocking to me," he added.
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