NATCHEZ — Several officials met Monday with a developer in a closed-door meeting to discuss the possibility of a “wellness center” at Duncan Park and an ongoing scattered-site housing project downtown.

Mayor Butch Brown said after the meeting with Chartre Consulting, the same company that built the Stonehurst housing development, that he misspoke last week when he called the proposed wellness center a health care complex.

Brown said that the center would offer fitness and recreation related activities, such as gymnastics, dancing, aerobics and other activities.

The facility may also include a pool — which Brown said could be used for aquatic therapy — and an indoor track.

Brown said last week that the center could be used as a place where people receive vaccinations or treatment for minor injuries, such as bee stings.

“It’s not on the table, but indeed it could be,” he said. “But it’s not going to replace an emergency clinic or the health department or rehab facilities.

“We are not building a health care facility,” he said. “We are not, at this juncture, building anything.”

The center could house a place where people could receive treatment for injuries sustained on location or at Duncan Park, Brown said.

Ward 3 Alderwoman Sarah Smith, Ward 6 Alderman Dan Dillard, Adams County Supervisor David Carter, as well as representatives from Natchez Community Hospital, Natchez Regional Medical Center, the Mississippi State Department of Health, Alcorn State University, Natchez Inc. and others were at the meeting.

Several residents who live near Duncan Park are concerned about building a facility in Duncan Park.

Wheeler Drive resident Jessica Coffman said she does not see the need for a wellness center in the park.

“It sounds like a great thing to do, but we already have facilities for dancing and gymnastics and gyms that offer classes,” Coffman said. “Why do we need something else like that at this point?”

Coffman and Walnut Street resident Betty Lou Nettles say one of their main concerns with constructing a new facility would be the increase of traffic in their neighborhood.

With an increase in traffic, Nettles said, comes an increase in littering and crime.

Robinson Street Peggy Olivero said residents in the Duncan Park area want to keep their neighborhood a peaceful place.

“We’re in a nice, quite neighborhood, and to bring something like that in … it needs to be in a business area,” Olivero said.

Ward 6 Alderman Dan Dillard, in whose ward Duncan Park sits, said he thinks a wellness center would be better suited for Liberty Park, which would give it access off a highway and put it away from residential neighborhoods.

“I think there it becomes a much more centrally located facility,” he said.

Brown said the meeting included discussion of Chartre’s scattered-site housing project in the Martin Luther King Jr. and St. Catherine streets area, both of which fall in a health care zone, which the city and county created under the Mississippi Health Care Industry Zone Act.

The act, which went into effect in July 2012, aims to promote the growth of the health care industry in Mississippi and provides a range of incentives for health care development in the designated zones.

Housing developers would also be eligible to receive additional points on their housing tax credit program applications if they developed in a health care zone.

Dillard said he is not exactly sure how housing or a wellness center fit into the goal of the health care zone act.

The scattered-site housing Chartre is planning to build, Brown said, consists of “high-quality,” houses with garages. Renters will lease the houses for 15 years, after which they will have the option to buy the house.

A downtown community center is also in the works, Brown said.

The health care zone could also incentivize business development, Brown said. Tax incentives could be available, Brown said, to businesses, such as a retail shop that also has a pharmacy.

Those kinds of businesses, as well as the center, Dillard and Duncan Park residents say, would be a good fit for Tracetown and Magnolia Mall, which have both experienced a decline in businesses over the years.

Overall, Brown said, the health care zone projects are an effort to make “our Martin Luther King Jr. (Street) the most beautiful Martin Luther King Jr. Street in the country.”

Brown wants to see the projects completed by Jan. 1, 2016, the start of the city’s tricentennial celebration.