Not Just for Exercise

Updated green recreation and athletic centers help with student performance and recruitment at higher education facilities.

A trip to the activities and recreation center has become as much a part of the college campus tour as has a look around the dining hall or a peek inside the academic library. As schools continue to fight for a larger portion of the enrollment pie, they’re having to renovate or replace their old-school workout facilities — adding in everything from luxury pools to juice bars — to attract new students and to encourage current students and alumni to hangout on campus more.
 

Abe Drabkin, director of marketing for the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association, says that the first collegiate recreation center in the United States came about as early as 1915. Since then, data has surfaced drawing a correlation between the use of recreational centers and a student’s collegiate achievement level, including evidence of lower student stress levels and higher graduation rates within a four-year period, he says.
 

According to a 2004 study commissioned by NIRSA and conducted by market research firm Kerr & Downs Research, one-third of potential college applicants believe that visiting a school’s recreational facilities is important, while nearly 30 percent rejected a school due to its lack of recreational opportunities. Additionally, NIRSA reports approximately 75 percent of college students participate in campus recreational sports programs. Drabkin explains that a sort of dualistic purpose of the centers has emerged.
 

“Rec centers create student success and rec centers get used to recruit students,” he says. “We’re finding more and more that the rest of the campus understands that concept and uses the rec center as a place to recruit, retain and train their students.”
 

Research shows colleges are working hard to meet that need, too. “Trends in College Spending 1998-2008,” a study published by the nonprofit, educational research group, The Delta Project, recognized that college spending on recreation now outpaces spending on education.
 

Besides meeting the students’ recreational needs, there is another factor altogether that students and faculty may not notice that comes into play when selecting winners for the NIRSA awards. Allison Van Leeuwen, who chairs the NIRSA committee that chooses the award recipients, says how “green” a recreational center is plays an important role in whether it receives the award or not.
 

“Sustainability is a big one,” Van Leeuwen says. “Innovative use of technology is another. For example, we look at what efficient methods have been utilized for facility management and security, such as whether the wellness center adopts an employee management system or newer technology like an ID or biometrics scanner.”
 

Other factors include how the recreation center correlates with the college’s campus master plan, unique design features the facility might have, how functional the building is, and the use of innovative construction materials or methods. Each nominee must be a NIRSA member, be no more than two years old, must be more than 20,000 square feet in size and cost at least $2 million for construction. The judging panel consists of recreational sports directors from member institutions and associate member architects.
 

Every year, NIRSA distinguishes a select few new or remodeled college rec centers with its Outstanding Sports Facilities Awards. This year’s 10 winners were made up of indoor and outdoor facilities from around the country, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, Ill.; Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont.; and Delaware State University in Dover, Del.
 

School Construction News chose these three 2010 Outstanding Sports Facilities Award winners from different parts of the country to highlight each of their unique planning methods, designs and use of interior elements.

Activities and Recreation Center

IUC’s updated $54 million Activities and Recreation Center has given new life to the 39-year-old space with a 120,000-square-foot expansion and a four-story atrium addition that runs the width of the building, bathing workout areas in natural light and providing plentiful views of interior activities from the outside. At 340,000 square feet, the ARC is one of the largest on-campus rec centers in the country. Designed by a partnership between VOA and Hughes Group Architects, the facility is one of two on-campus recreation buildings renovated and expanded by the firms, giving the 41,000-plus students of the Big Ten school two locations where they can hit the weights or get in their cardio.
 

“UIUC had, what they considered, very outdated recreational facilities,” explains Dean Huspen, senior vice president at VOA, and the project’s architect. “They had two very sturdy buildings for these facilities, but the school felt that inside they were outdated and wanted to renovate and expand them to accommodate a larger student body, which had grown over the last 40 years.”

The project, which was paid for by a student fee increase, involved a multiphase, six-year plan to improve the ARC (known as the Intramural Physical Education Building before the renovations) and the much smaller Campus Recreation Center East, expanding them by 40 percent and 90 percent respectively.
 

“The renovation of the ARC was more surgical, as changes were made throughout the entire structure,” says Huspen. “The CRCE was a much smaller, metal building, so the renovation there was easier — it was more of a spruce up. The real heavy work at CRCE was the expansion.”
 

Architects transformed several of the building’s racquetball courts for other uses, such as multipurpose areas capable of accommodating spinning, yoga, and other contemporary popular sports and activities. The upgrade added or renovated seven multipurpose rooms, the largest at 6,180 square feet; four gymnasiums, with nearly 85,000 square feet of space and 12 basketball, courts between them; and 12 racquetball and three squash courts. Also included in the layout are a small indoor track; a 23,000-square-foot indoor pool; a 34-foot-high climbing wall; a 150-person auditorium; instructional kitchen; café; meeting rooms and administrative offices.
 

“The school wanted more program rooms for today’s fitness trends,” Huspen says. “So with the existing structure, we had to largely work with what was there, making the spaces work by knocking out walls and reformulating the layout.”
 

“You don’t really know whether or not fitness trends are going to be permanent,” he added. “Our goal was to build something versatile enough so that in five years the school could change the space without knocking down walls again.”
 

Among the building’s most striking features is its atrium, which doubles as a central organizing and gathering space.
 

“We tried to make the building as glassy as possible so you can see all the activity happening inside [during] the evening hours,” says Huspen. “We designed the ARC so it was very open and life-feeling. From the outside, you can see it’s a busy place with people working out, runners on the track and a lot of other activity going on.”

 

he $15.5 million renovation of the Marga Hosaeus Recreation and Fitness Center added a rustic façade and some 20,000 square feet of workout space to the circa 1970s building. Supported by a $65-per-year student fee increase, the 140,000-square-foot renovated fitness center added space for spinning and hydro-fitness classes, both new to the school’s recreation program, and boosted student use of the facility 30 percent over pre-renovation attendance. The school also reported theft and crime at the fitness center is down 80-90 percent, due in part to a new biometric hand scanner used for access, and a new security system.
 

“The un-renovated fitness center had four or five additions attached to it over the years, and it was really a maze of poorly planned add-ons,” says Mike Dowling, president of Dowling and Sandholm Architects. “Ultimately, there was a circulation issue with the building, kind of like a hospital maze, and there was no sense of a central space that organized all the different components of the rec center.
 

“Nobody went there,” he adds. “In fact, as big as it was, most people walked right by it on the street not even knowing it was there.”

The student body became the driving force behind the renovation. Open discussions were held between students and designers over several days to determine wants ranging from the exercise rooms to the exterior finish.
 

“Everybody really gravitated towards the same look, which incorporated steel and glass and had a very contemporary finish, but also a rustic appearance,” Dowling says. “The students wanted the renovated center to be open, well lit and very inviting, so as people were walking by on campus, it would be illuminated from the inside and serve as a kind of beacon.”
 

Approximately 20,000 square feet at the core of the building was demolished during construction to make room for a two-and-a-half story high central space that provides views of the facility’s workout areas and its rock-climbing wall. Renovations were made to the building’s pool, several of its fitness rooms, the locker area, and an eighth of a mile running track. The renovation and expansion provided capacity for several new features, including saunas and a fireplace lounge, and upgraded existing areas, adding about three-times more space than the old complex for new cardiovascular machines and weight equipment.
 

A major challenge to the project was how best to integrate the building’s patchwork of additions together, says Dowling.
 

“We had to figure out how to knit together 120,000 square feet of building on a budget that could handle $40,000 worth of construction,” he adds. “We also rebuilt the façade, which represented 20 percent of the exterior of this building, so that was a challenge too.”
 

After nearly two years of design and planning and another two years of construction, the Marga Hosaeus Recreation and Fitness Center is now more than a recognizable landmark on campus — it’s busy “nonstop day and night,” says Dowling.

 

When Delaware State University approached the architecture firms HMBA and Hughes Group Architects, the college was looking to give its Dover, Del., campus a makeover, making it more student-friendly and giving it the ability to accommodate an expected enrollment increase. DSU officials had just drafted a 10-year plan, with the goal of investing $296.4 million into construction projects at DSU to accomplish both objectives. Within that plan was outlined a need for a new wellness center and a new student center.
 

“DSU has traditionally been a commuter campus and the school wanted to create an environment where students wouldn’t want to go off campus,” explains HMBA’s Ben Caldwell, DSU’s project manager. “The university had fairly limited on-campus opportunities for its students at the time.”
 

DSU’s previous wellness center was an outdated student rec area with an old pool, poor basketball court, and ancient NCAA strength and conditioning area, none of which was very appealing to the students.
 

The school’s new $22 million Wellness and Recreation Center was part of a two-phase project that included renovating the existing rec facility and connecting the two buildings. Phase One included construction of a student-athlete strength and conditioning center, where a Division 1-A weight training area and locker rooms for the school’s varsity squads are located. Two encompassed the construction of the two-story, 54,000-square-foot WRC and the rebuilding of an adjacent swimming pool, which holds three lap lanes, inter-pool basketball hoops and an inter-pool bench with water jets. WRC amenities include dual basketball/volleyball courts, aerobic and fitness class spaces, a juice bar with tables and seating, and a one-eighth of a mile running track that winds through the facility’s workout areas.
 

The entire building was dedicated last February along with new outdoor recreation fields and courts and DSU’s new $24 million Martin Luther King Jr. Student Center, which was also designed by HMBA. The entire conglomeration of buildings is known as the Student Center Complex.
 

The design of the WRC integrates social and athletic areas throughout versus adding social areas, like lounges, into hidden corners away from the action. Examples include an inter-pool bench located adjacent to the lap lanes and a wedge-shaped indoor seating area between the two playing courts. HMBA created the seating area, where tables and chairs are located, by building the new court slightly offset from the old.
 

“Now, instead of having to sit off in the corner and watch the basketball game, there’s this very exciting wedge of space right between the two courts so that players and people not playing in games can interact with one another,” Caldwell says.
 

Situated near the campus entrance, the WRC sports a vibrant redbrick façade, which provides a new take on an old look at DSU. Unlike many of the school’s existing boxy, redbrick buildings, the WRC features separated brick walls with floor-to-ceiling windows between panels, breaking up the monotony of the traditional brick appearance.
 

“It was a very conscious effort on our part to take the red brick vocabulary of DSU and use it in creating our new building in a slightly different way so we didn’t end up with this gigantic, plain red box,” Caldwell adds.