News

Rec center sees unbridled support

By Christian Schmidt
The Daily Cougar

Despite problems with towels and weather, the opening of the new Campus Recreation and Wellness Center has gone forward with relatively few complaints, drawing considerable numbers of student patrons.

"(It's) awesome. Things have gone really, really well," Director of Campus Activities Kathy Anzivino said. "There are some behind-the-scenes things that weire still trying to get worked out, but theyire not affecting students or members."

Some prominent University members had expressed fears the facility would not receive significant use, but those worries appear to be unfounded, at least at this early juncture. Recreation center employees counted an average of 2,243.8 people on weekdays. The numbers are counted hourly, so some people were counted twice. Still, a fairly large number of people are using the facility.

Software designed to keep track of attendance at the center is not yet fully operational, so exact counts of the number of people using the facility are unavailable. Anzivino said the software should be operational soon and will allow accurate counts.

Instead, recreation center employees are doing hourly counts of people in the center. These counts have made it difficult to determine the exact number of people using the facility.

These counts do provide insight as to when the center is at its busiest. There is low traffic in the mornings. The highest count of people in the center before 11 a.m. was 78.

But traffic picks up in the afternoon. Between 150 and 350 people use the facility from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were the busiest days during the first week, which corresponds to the busiest days for students spending time at the University in general. Monday and Friday were considerably less busy, while Saturday and Sunday had the lowest attendance.

For the moment, the welcome center located at the front of the facility has been so busy that some features have not yet been implemented. The offices of intramural sports, which will eventually be located in the welcome center, are on the second floor for the moment.

The majority of complaints so far have been about towels. The Department of Campus Recreation had planned to move washers and dryers from Garrison Gymnasium to the new facility. Unfortunately, the new center contains no setup to operate the dryers, which run on steam.

A wiring problem has also made it impossible to use the dryers. Thus, staff members are driving dirty towels to Garrison to be washed and dried and returning them to the recreation center.

Despite a loan of towels from the University Hilton, there have still been shortages while the towels were in transit. Anzivino said the new washers and dryers will be delivered this week, which should end the towel shortage problems.

The pools, both indoor and outdoor, are expected to open in the first few days of March. It had been announced that the pools would be open March 1, and Anzivino said Tuesday that both would be open by the time students get back from Spring Break on March 10.

The food operations at the center should also be in place by that date. Chartwells will operate a C-Store and a Smoothie King at the center.

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