Antioch won't get into fitness business

Despite the chance to generate a profit, Antioch village officials decided they won't take over a downtown fitness facility being vacated by its owner.

Saying the venture was financially risky, board members voted Monday against a proposal to own and operate Potential Training and Fitness. The vote was unanimous.

Fitness business owner Al Roth approached the village a number of weeks ago with the idea of the sale after he decided to leave the storefront to focus on being a personal trainer.

Roth has operated the facility at 939 Main St. for four years. He offered to sell the nearly 70 pieces of exercise equipment and other fixtures to the village for $25,000 and have the facility operated by the parks department.

Jim Parks, management analyst for the village, studied the feasibility of the idea and concluded it was possible to make a profit or maybe break even but warned the business could fail, too.

"There is a risk anytime you enter into this kind of venture," Parks said. "This is not a no-risk proposal."

The proposal called for a 90-day trial period after which the village could opt out of the deal if business was slow. But park board members said it would be extremely difficult to attract a qualified person to manage the place knowing the job might only last three months and opposed the idea of a trial period.

Parks said his analysis found the training center would need a minimum of 500 members to break even. There are only 380 members now. And that number may not be accurate because Roth's records don't indicate how many of those yearly members are still active, Parks said. The number could be significantly lower.

Trustee Ted Poulos said the numbers concerned him.

"This is not something we should jump into when we have a tight budget at this time," Poulos said. "We're already trying to find things we need to chop out. It could put us in worse situation than we are in right now."

Saying the idea is a good one, Trustee Dennis Crosby said he wished he could support it but had too many worries.

"This is terrific idea, a wonderful opportunity, but I don't think we are in a position to put our taxpayer dollars at risk," Crosby said. "I think the timing is bad."

Fitness: Village doesn't want to put tax money at risk