Lee — With an eye toward increasing exercise and athletic opportunities for kids and adults, proponents of a new NinjaFit Outdoor Obstacle Course Playground in Lee are looking for a bit more help to see their dream come to fruition for the community.
On Saturday, April 26, attendees at a fundraiser dinner party at Greenock Country Club, 220 West Park Street in Lee, can make that happen.
A collaboration between nonprofit Neighborhood Ninjas and the Lee Youth Commission, the project will add a Ninja Warrior, or obstacle, course to a section of the Lee Athletic Field. Founded by Alex Katz, Neighborhood Ninjas is a member of the Lee Chamber of Commerce, and the event will allow participants to learn more about the venture.
For $65 per person, dinner party guests can dance the night away starting at 5:30 p.m. with a dinner featuring main courses of eggplant or chicken parmesan. The evening’s entertainment includes celebrity presentations by 2024 American Ninja Warrior women’s champion and Pembroke, Mass., native Addy Herman along with competitor Anthony Eardley. Accomplished youth warriors, Pittsfield’s Van Boehm and Harry Klein, who lives seasonally in Otis, will take the podium as well. Klein is among several individuals and entities fundraising to sponsor a specific obstacle on the playground.
Tables of eight can be purchased for the discounted price of $450, and reservations must be made in advance online or by emailing Katz at info@neighborhoodninjas.org. The event was rescheduled from its original February date due to inclement weather.
Many local businesses have already contributed to the evening’s live auction, allowing successful bidders to leave with Catamount Mountain Resort tickets, performance or life coaching sessions, gift baskets from High Lawn Farm or Guidos Fresh Marketplace, massage gift certificates, yoga or energy healing classes, a private wildlife sanctuary tour, or passes to a zoo or a Ninja open gym.
Awards to supporting businesses will be announced at the party, recognizing those who have made commitments to the playground build.
Dollars and sense
A portion of the $280,000 needed to develop the program was approved at Lee’s Annual Town Meeting in May, using $40,000 of Community Preservation Committee (CPC) appropriations as a playground deposit and another $10,000 of CPC monies for Neighborhood Ninjas consulting fees. That tally includes a 15-obstacle course, delivery and installation of the equipment, and a safety-rated rubberized landing surface that adds the necessary safety and accessibility component to the project.
With an additional $60,000 raised to date through sponsorships, grants, and private fundraisers, another $180,000 is still needed to complete the park’s funding, Katz said, adding that she is still awaiting decisions on other grants to help draw down that deficit. Given the current federal funding climate, however, she said grants are in a state of flux, resulting in the playground’s opening date being pushed from this year to the spring of 2026 to provide “more time to solidify some of those grants.” Additionally, a spring opening allows the group to transition directly into its programming amid less weather variability, Katz said.
“We’re hopeful that the money will come through quickly and this community-wide effort will allow us to open up the NinjaFit playground in 2026,” said Lee resident Joshua Bloom, who also serves on the Lee Youth Commission.
Why a Ninja playground in Lee?
So far, Lee residents have been able to get a taste of what a Ninja playground would look like with a kickoff exhibition held at last year’s Founder’s Day weekend followed by a local meet-and-greet giving residents the opportunity to ask questions of the project’s key players. A March 29 program, “Conquer the Course at Ninja Discovery Day,” drew about 75 children from across the Berkshires and was hosted in conjunction with the Lee Youth Commission and West Boylston’s Ninja Warrior facility, Ultimate Obstacles.
Bloom became a strong advocate for a local Ninja playground after his two daughters discovered the sport in free public parks while traveling abroad. When the family returned home, they found it difficult to continue their new athletic obsession after school given the nearly one hour of travel time on weekdays—to Albany or South Windsor Ninja gyms—to train. With only weekend training available, the great distances to access Ninja facilities limited the children’s ability to advance in the sport.
Enter Alex Katz, founder of Neighborhood Ninjas, an organization that partners with communities such as Lee to develop low-maintenance, safe outdoor Ninja playgrounds. The group already has one project under its belt in a Wilmington, Del., park constructed in 2024. The park received high marks by its users as well as its host town.
“We’ve seen park attendance quadruple since opening that [Ninja playground],” Katz said. The project hosted about 30 free classes, workshops, and competitions, events that brought in attendees from out of the area who also patronized local businesses. “That’s been really great for the community,” Katz said. The obstacle-based programming includes working with underserved and underrepresented community members, with the same focus to be given to Lee’s playground.
Another plus for such a facility lies in its ability to attract all ages, Katz said, especially given today’s sedentary lifestyle, with folks sitting in front of computers or being on phone screens all day. At the Delaware playground, she has seen entire families participate in the Ninja course together, bonding between ad hoc competitions—parents versus kids or siblings vying to be the top family athlete.
For Bloom and the Lee Youth Commission, the project presents a regional benefit.
“This [course] being in a public park with no pre-registration necessary, being free and open to all means that this is available to all,” he said. “Lee is in the center of the Berkshires, which means that people from Pittsfield down to Great Barrington, Sheffield, Egremont, and beyond can easily access the park within 30 minutes or less.”
With its location just off the Massachusetts Turnpike, the Lee site could also pull users from Westfield, the Pioneer Valley, or Albany. “I do think this is a draw, an attraction, that the Berkshires will be able to promote and be able to have people want to come to the Berkshires or from within the Berkshires to Lee to be able to utilize this,” Bloom said. “That is a really wonderful thing for our town.”
Who to thank, and counting on
To date, the NinjaFit program has received support from Berkshire businesses including Berkshire United Way, Adams Community Bank, Henry’s Electric, Ultimate Obstacles, New England OCR Expo, The Stockbridge Inn, and Harry Klein through his special project.
Event sponsors for the dinner party include Catamount Mountain Resort, Yoga Lee, Guidos, High Lawn Farm, Reiki with Sarah Brianna, Massage with Victoria Fiorini, Berkshire Organizing, The Zoo, Ultimate Obstacles Holyoke, Renewed Vision Life Coaching, Mind Over Motion Mental Training, Spartan Race, Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary, and Lee Dominos.
Katz said she is on the cusp of adding more donors to the ever-expanding list of individuals and businesses contributing to the dinner, with sponsors of the playground project to receive a place on the site’s signage for a company logo and website QR code.
“We are excited for the home stretch of this fundraising effort,” Bloom said.
For more information, visit Neighborhood Ninjas’ website.
