Facility Planning & Operations: Rec Centers

Grand openings of athletics, recreation and health facilities have become routine at western Michigan's Calvin College, where five major facilities are opening in January and February as part of the $50 million Spoelhof Fieldhouse Complex. At the center of the project is the 5,000-seat Van Noord Arena, which is home to numerous Knights teams and features four full-size basketball courts, volleyball courts and a 45-foot-tall-by-80-foot-wide climbing wall that extends from a lower level up into the main entry. Also opening are the Huizenga Tennis and Track Center, an indoor facility with a 200-meter track surrounding four competition tennis courts, long-jump pits and pole-vault boxes; the Venema Aquatic Center, featuring an Olympic-size pool with a movable bulkhead and a 14-foot diving well; the Hoogenboom Health and Recreation Center, a renovation of the old Calvin Fieldhouse that added classrooms, a human-performance lab and dance studios; and a new health services center with labs, offices and a diet-counseling room.

Crews recently completed the final phase of construction of the Anderson Family YMCA, which has served members in central Raleigh, N.C., since 1959. The $15 million project involved demolishing the nearly 50-year-old building, and fitting 90,000 square feet of program space into a smaller footprint. The facility now features a six-lane pool, three locker rooms, group exercise and group cycling rooms, a yoga room, a gymnasium, an elevated track, three racquetball courts and more than 10,000 square feet of space for strength and cardio training on all new equipment. Other amenities include a television lounge, a barber shop, massage rooms, a childcare center, a small chapel, and steam and sauna rooms.

More Grand Openings

• The result of a community effort, a $300,000 multisport indoor sports facility recently opened at the Beal College campus in Bangor, Maine.
• Chapel Hill, N.C., swimmers are celebrating the opening of the city's $6.5 million Homestead Aquatics center, featuring two new pools.

college athletics    college recreation        aquatics    rec center    stadium/arena        basketball