Some Michigan gym owners are openly defying Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's executive order to close during the coronavirus pandemic, even after police issued a few criminal citations.
"We're open because I think it's unconstitutional," said Don Larson, owner of a Gold's Gym on Hoover Road in Warren, where about a dozen young men were lifting weights early Monday afternoon. “My members need a place to be to stay strong and healthy, and it keeps their immune systems high.”
State officials say that by ignoring the governor and staying open, these gyms and their employees are flirting with criminal misdemeanor citations and potentially risking the spread of a second wave of COVID-19 across Michigan.
Some customers who visited the gyms seem happy to return to their pre-pandemic fitness routines, and said they weren't worried about catching the virus while working out.
“It’s your own choice; you don’t have to come here," said Mary Steinc, who along with her husband, Bobby Steinc, on Monday visited a reopened Crunch Fitness gym in Warren.
There is no readily available estimate of the number of gyms that are defying Whitmer's closure order. Many metro Detroit gyms appear to be obeying the order, which took effect March 16.
Whitmer lifted the order June 10 for gyms in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, which had seen fewer coronavirus cases.
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Lower Michigan gyms were hours away from legally reopening last Thursday after a judge ordered an end to Whitmer's closure after a group of independent gym owners and trainers sued. But an 11th-hour ruling the day before by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals delayed implementation of the lower court's decision while it pondered the case.
The appeals court has yet to issue its decision on Whitmer's appeal of the lower court's order, which said the state hadn't shown sufficient evidence to back its assertion that a gym would be a "petri dish" for COVID-19 infection.
Local enforcement
Enforcement of the criminal penalties in Whitmer's closure order is up to local police and county prosecutors. The executive order itself does not give law enforcement any direct authority to “shut down” a business, said state Attorney General spokesman Ryan Jarvi.
Last week, police in Meridian Township near East Lansing issued misdemeanor citations to a co-owner and a manager of a Crunch Fitness franchise who refused to close the gym. The franchise's owners eventually agreed to shut down.
It was one of seven Crunch locations in Michigan that reopened last Thursday morning.
"We had a Powerhouse (Gym) that also opened," recalled Lt. Rick Grillo of the Meridian Township Police Department. "We went to them and explained the (appeals court's) order, and they contacted their legal department and they voluntarily closed.”
Gym attendance optional
Owners of reopened gyms insist their businesses are no public health threat and contend they operate safely with social distancing and stepped up cleaning.
Some have pointed to a recently published study involving gyms in Norway that found zero confirmed COVID-19 transmissions linked to gym use during the pandemic.
"We are definitely not trying to be adversarial," said James Wiese, a co-owner of the Crunch Michigan franchise locations. "We are just trying to give the community what they’re asking for. And if they don’t feel comfortable coming, we don’t want them to come.”
Another co-owner of that Crunch franchise, Adam Hourani, was issued one of the two misdemeanor citations for the East Lansing-area location that reopened, said Randall Chioini, an attorney for the franchise group.
"It’s a 93-day misdemeanor, and punishable by a potential 93 days in jail," he said.
That Crunch has since closed, Chioini said, although most of the other Crunch gyms in the state were still open as of early this week.
Local enforcement
Crunch Fitness is a New York-based franchise that arrived in Michigan in 2017 with ambitious expansion plans.
The Warren location opened March 6 in a Schoenherr Road retail strip. Just 10 days later, as the coronavirus spread, it and all other gyms throughout Michigan had to close under Whitmer's executive order.
Wiese, the Michigan franchise co-owner, said their attorneys do not consider the governor's order to be a straightforward closure order.
"If it were the law, we definitely would not be open; we would not be doing this," Wiese said in a phone interview last week.
Warren Police Commissioner Bill Dwyer said officers have issued citations to the Gold's Gym for disobeying Whitmer's order, but not the new Crunch gym. Police have referred the matter to the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office, he said.
Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said Tuesday that he believes gyms should be following Whitmer's orders.
“I’m a gym-goer myself, but haven’t gone since the beginning of this shutdown," he said. "As frustrating as that is, it is still the law, whether you like it or not."
Gym members like reopening
Crunch member Rico Drewery, 25, of Harper Woods, said he visited the Warren Crunch on the first day it reopened last Thursday.
He noticed that the gym is taking various COVID-19 precautions, such as turning off the water fountains and posting social-distancing reminders. He said that members generally wear masks when they enter the gym, but may take them off once they start exercising.
“There are a lot of 6-foot signs everywhere, just keeping it in the back of everyone’s head that we’re still in a pandemic," Drewery said.
Contact JC Reindl at 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jcreindl. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.
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