The Asphalt Green Battery Park City membership office opened today in the Verdesian (211 North End, between Warren and Murray), so you know I was there. The facility is opening Nov. 1, touch wood, across the street at 212 North End.

I don’t like being sold to—understatement of the year!—and I’ve found that gyms are among the worst at that kind of thing, so it was a relief that the membership supervisor I spoke with mostly answered my questions directly. I didn’t ask a lot about the facility—you can find a list of services on the website, and anyway, I only really care about basic stuff. (I can’t imagine what it’d take to get me into a classroom or the theater….) I did check out the maps, and it certainly looks like it’s 52K square feet.

Anyway, if you know you’ll be joining, you should go soon. They say they’ll only be offering 100 charter memberships (could be true), and that 47 have been sold (could be true). What a charter membership gets you: No initiation fee and $20 off each month’s dues for the first year. Otherwise, the rates are as follows:

Adult: $199 initiation, $105 monthly dues
Family I (one adult and up to two kids 17 or younger): $249 initiation, $125 monthly dues
Family II (two adults and up to two kids 17 or younger): $299 initiation, $175 monthly dues

By signing up you commit for the first year—I think that’s true even if you’re not a charter member.

One important note: Any programming that involves an instructor is fee-based. It matters because there’s quite a bit of programming, at least according to a mock schedule I was shown, and even if you know you’ll only want to bike or run (or whatever), you may find that the facilities are being used by programming that the gym is financially incentivized to offer. The gymnasium and half of the lap pool, for instance, will be used by programming for much of the day.