Benton Harbor City Commissioners have rejected a lease with a private property owner that would have enabled the city to set up a small fitness park downtown.
In 2021, the city purchased equipment for a Priority Health Fitness Court using $50,000 grants from the National Fitness, Whirlpool, and Corewell Health. However, the court has never been installed and the equipment has been sitting in storage.
At their regular meeting on Monday, city commissioners were told ARP Global Holdings has offered to lease a parcel across the street from Dwight P. Mitchell City Center Park to the city for $100 per year so the fitness court could be placed there. Mayor Pro Tem Duane Seats said there are plenty of other places where the city could install the equipment.
“Maybe we can find a different area,”Seats said. “We’ve got a park that’s right there, on the other side of the roundabout, that’s doing nothing. Maybe we can put it there, and you don’t have to pay any money…We have a lot of parks in the community that are doing absolutely nothing that we can place this in.”
Mayor Marcus Muhammad said there’s no need to bring in a third party to use the fitness equipment.
“This is for a public area, for public use,” Muhammad said. “And now we’re going to somebody to put it on private property, and now we’re leasing from some LLC. I think that we can put it on public property, and just make everything public.”
ARP Global Holdings is owned by Chris Cook, who worked out an agreement with City Manager Alex Little for the property on the north side of West Main Street.
Little told commissioners Monday he thought the site would work because it’s close to City Center Park, where the equipment was originally supposed to be placed. Now that commissioners have rejected the idea, it’s back to the drawing board.
