Swinomish buys fitness center

Records filed last week with the Skagit County Auditor show that the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community purchased the property where Bayside Fitness has operated for the last 10 years.

“We’re going to be selling off all our equipment and moving on,” said co-owner Darren Wightman.

He said he was hoping that whomever bought the building “would lease it back to me. These guys swooped in and decided they would turn it into a drug rehab facility.”

The newspaper has reached out to officials at the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community for confirmation of plans for the new purchase but did not hear back on Tuesday.

According to recorded docu-ments, former landlords, Nabeel and Brena Jurdi, signed the property over to a holding company in 2012.

Bayside Fitness had a lease with the former owners that was supposed to run until 2032, but the lease was terminated when the property went into foreclosure.

The fitness building is more than 8,000 square feet in size on nearly 1½ acres of land on the north side of Highway 20, east of the refineries off S. March’s Point Road.

Records indicate that Swino-mish purchased the property at auction for $900,000 and the deed was recorded on Sept. 8.

The county assessor had the property valued at more than $1.2 million this year, and it generated $12,571.76 in property tax this year.