Motor City Match awards $40,000 grant to help local entrepreneur turn dorm room dream into a Detroit gym

• Just Elevate Fitness Club marks Motor City Match’s 207th neighborhood ribbon cutting and brings a full-service fitness club to Detroit’s Rivertown neighborhood

• Owner Jordan Smith used a $40,000 Motor City Match grant to purchase equipment for the new facility

• The club offers open gym access, personal training, instructor-led classes, recovery services and wellness programming

• Smith began building his fitness brand while attending Michigan State University and has been operating as a fitness entrepreneur since 2019

July 31, 2026 (DETROIT) – Mayor Mary Sheffield and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) today celebrated the opening of Just Elevate Fitness Club, Motor City Match’s 207th neighborhood ribbon cutting. The new Rivertown fitness facility was built to make health and wellness more accessible by removing the barriers that keep people from getting started.

Located at 1583 Franklin St. in Orleans Landing, Just Elevate Fitness Club is owned by Detroit native Jordan Smith and supported by a $40,000 Motor City Match grant. Motor City Match helped Smith purchase equipment for the facility, allowing him to bring his vision to life with the quality and experience he believed the community deserved.

The fitness club offers open gym memberships, personal training, instructor-led fitness classes, recovery services, community wellness events and short-term access options including day passes, seven-day class passes and two-week all-access passes. Membership options are structured to meet a range of needs and budgets, with open gym memberships starting at $49.99 per month.

No barriers, just elevate

Just Elevate Fitness Club was created to address some of the most common barriers people face when trying to begin or maintain a fitness routine, including cost, confidence, knowledge and scheduling.

The club offers tiered memberships, payment options, open gym access, group classes and one-on-one personal training. Its recovery area includes NormaTec compression therapy and InBody Scan technology, allowing members to train, recover and track progress in one location.

“We want to take out all the barriers that fitness has,” Smith said. “Whether it’s workouts, pricing or services, we want everything to make sense.”

Research backs up the challenge Smith set out to solve.

A one-year study of fitness club members in Norway, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found many fitness clubs see only 10% to 37% of new members exercise regularly in their first few months, with supervised training and social support ranking among the strongest predictors of who stuck with their routine. The pattern holds in the U.S. as well. A 2026 Health & Fitness Association report, based on a nationally representative survey of 18,000 U.S. residents, found gym members are nearly twice as likely to meet physical activity guidelines as the general population and seven times less likely to report no physical activity at all.

The facility also serves as an official fitness home for other trainers and wellness professionals, giving them space to grow their own brands while supporting members.

“Jordan created a plan, stuck to it and turned it into a business that’s helping Detroiters get healthier while giving other trainers and young people a place to grow too,” said Sheffield. “Economic empowerment is how Detroit rises higher, and we thank Jordan for contributing to the growth of our city.”

Motor City Match helped Smith purchase equipment for the facility, allowing him to bring his vision to life with the quality and experience he believed the community deserved.

“Jordan put in years training clients, building his brand and learning the business before he ever opened a door,” said Sean Gray, DEGC senior vice president of Small Business Services, which administers the Motor City Match program. “Motor City Match gave him the push he needed, and now Just Elevate is bringing wellness, entrepreneurship and opportunity to Rivertown.”

A dorm room dream comes to fruition

Smith first began mapping out the idea for his gym as a sophomore at Michigan State University in 2019. Sitting in his dorm room with a whiteboard on the wall, he outlined a plan to graduate with a marketing degree, build a career, save money and eventually open his own fitness facility.

He quickly realized he did not want to wait.

He began personal training, offering free fitness classes on campus and building a reputation as “the fitness guy” among students. Smith graduated from MSU in 2021 after spending two years refining his brand, coaching clients and positioning himself for full-time entrepreneurship.

“I put my back against the wall intentionally because I had that much faith that this is what I was supposed to do,” Smith said.

After graduation, he returned to Detroit and continued developing his business through programs including Michigan Black Business Alliance Capital Connect, TechTown Detroit’s Retail Boot Camp and JPMorgan Chase’s Coaching for Impact.

Fitness with a purpose

Smith’s passion for fitness began with sports. Growing up in Detroit, he played football, basketball, baseball and track, developing a love for staying active. Losing his grandmother to stage four breast cancer in 2015 turned fitness into more than a personal interest.

“I might have loved fitness because I played sports. I might have loved it because I wanted to look good and feel good,” Smith said. “But after losing my grandmother, I found a purpose behind it.”

That purpose now extends beyond the gym walls. Just Elevate Fitness Club partners with Detroit Public Schools Community District for summer youth wellness programming and works with local organizations and businesses on fitness events, staff wellness activities and community programming. The business currently employs three part-time team members.

“The gym being in Detroit is amazing, not because of the location, but because of the impact,” Smith said. “Now the rest of the world gets a chance to see how amazing Detroit is, and I’m glad I’m part of that movement.”

Through 30 rounds of Motor City Match:

• Total cash grants: $21 million (Total leveraged investment: $111 million)

• 84% of awardees are minority-owned

• 72% are women-owned

• 70% are owned by Detroit residents

About Motor City Match

Motor City Match is a unique partnership between the City of Detroit, the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC), the Economic Development Corporation of the City of Detroit (EDC) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Competitive financial assistance is supported by a broad partnership of Southeast Michigan community development financial institutions and corporations including, Bank of America, Fifth Third Bank, Ford Foundation, Hudson Webber Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, New Economy Initiative and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Motor City Match applications are available quarterly. More information is available at www.MotorCityMatch.com