The donated handmade wooden benches are not ADA compliant so the city is forcing the builder to remove them. So having literally nothing is the alternative. Also the city says the builder can put the benches in their parks, but wouldn’t that also need to be ADA compliant?
That’s way bigger than the footprint. Usually you have big level concrete areas around doors for wheelchairs, for example.
Even if it’s 3x the size of the bench, it’s concrete, not a multimillion dollar building, and the community clearly wants benches. If the wooden ones are legitimately unfit for the public then they should install proper benches. But just pouring concrete would probably be cheaper.