Wellness Center reaches final stages

The $28.2 million Wellness and Recreation Center, being erected on West Campus, is on schedule to be completed by Oct. 21 and will open to the public shortly after that date.

Construction began for the 101,000-square-foot building on Sept. 14, 2010 and is currently 90 percent completed, according to Dave Terrell, Ed.S director of the Wellness and Recreation Center.

 

First Floor

To enter the facility students and guests will walk through a turnstile.

“You will have a Biometric Reader, so before we open all of the students will come in and integrate your biometrics with your Bobcat card,” Terrell said. “So your primary means of entrance once you get registered is to just come in and put your finger on the Bio Reader and the turnstiles open and that’s it.”

The Biometric Reader will scan a vein in your finger to grant access.

A 29-foot climbing wall with five different climbing routes will be on the right at the entrance. The climbing wall will be managed by the Outdoor Education Department. The wall will have an auto-belay system and training will be available to all students to learn to climb and belay. The ropes course on East Campus will remain open.

The first floor will also house a three-court gym. Two of the courts will be used for basketball, volleyball and badminton. The third is a multi-use court where the Georgia College club hockey team can practice with roller skates.

This court is outlined with a dasher board system similar to a hockey rink. The corners are rounded like an ice hockey arena and features a recessed goal. This court can also be used for indoor soccer and basketball.

A classroom for MAT and Kinesiology is located on the first floor as well.

Student Health Services is moving to the first floor. The facility will house six exam rooms.

The Heath Services area of the Wellness Center has a separate entrance from a separate parking lot designated especially for those students who need to use the Health Services facility. Counseling Services will be located on the second floor.

An eight-lane competition pool and a separate heated recreation pool are located to the left of the courts. Students and guests can enter the pools from the locker room/changing room area. There will be a patio accessible from the pool area.

 

 

Second Floor

Sixty-four pieces of cardio equipment have been ordered. The machines will be facing the outside of the facility.

“They will all be facing outside so you will be able to look out onto the front lawn while you are exercising,” Terrell said.

In the front of the facility will be a landscaped lawn. Benches will be located out on the lawn for seating.

In addition to the cardio equipment there is an indoor track, the personal training office, a massage therapy room, an assessment lab for physical training experiments and a room that will be used for various fitness classes.

Counseling Services is located on the second floor and is accessible from the same outside entrance that Health Services is assessable from.

 

Green

The Wellness and Recreation Center is projected to save the school money per year in lighting costs due to the glass used to enclose the structure. The glass walls are tinted to allow in light and keep out the heat, saving the building from having an increased cooling bill to contend with.

The Green Fee Committee, a student-initiated proposal to make campus a greener place, allocated $9,750 for the facility to buy ReRev machines. ReRev technology will be attached to four elliptical exercise machines and will convert the human energy produced during exercise into a viable, reusable form of energy.

“A thirty minute workout will generate 50 watts of clean, carbon-free electricity,” Terrell said. “That is enough to run a CFL light bulb for two hours and 30 minutes, charge a cell phone fully six times or power a laptop for one hour.”

 

Wellness Depot

According to Terrell the Wellness Depot on main campus will not close as soon as the new Wellness and Recreation Center opens.

“The depot is going to stay open for a while. Dr. Leland had promised some of the students that it would stay open for a while and be evaluated on a regular basis,” Terrell said.

Terrell does not anticipate moving the equipment from the Wellness Depot to the new center.

New hours will be available in the new Wellness and Recreation Center different from those at the depot. Concrete hours have not yet been determined.