Due to the extreme overcrowding in the Stony Brook SAC Wellness Center and the sports complex, the Department of Campus Recreation has been working on plans to build a new recreation center on the campus. President Shirley Strum Kenny chose this project out of several others that she had to pick from. The 85,000 square foot facility will cost $37.5 million, of which Stony Brook raised $19.5 million, and Senator Kenneth LaValle helped get the last $18 million. The Campus recreation center should be open for the incoming 2011 class.
This new facility will be five times bigger than the existing open recreation facilities that are available to students. Many students leave because they see that the fitness centers are overcrowded. Andrea Reyes, a SAC Wellness Center employee, says that she sees people all the time, “walk in, and walk out when they see it’s too crowded.” The new center will have a three court gym, available for basketball, volleyball, bad mitten, fencing, ping-pong, etc, along with 11,952 square feet of weights and fitness equipment on the 2nd floor, and another 3,574 square feet of weights and fitness on the first and lower levels, and a 1/10 mile track.
Currently, facilities in the sports complex only give 2.4 hours of open recreation time to students, including club and intramural teams. The new Campus Recreation Center will be open from 6am to 12 midnight, allowing for 18 hours a day of free and open recreation time. Non-credit fitness classes will start being offered in the CRC’s higher capacity workout studio rooms, and access will be free to students as are the rest of the recreation facilities on campus.
There is a severe lack of opportunity for recreation, wellness and no room for club teams’ practice, and/or competition on Stony Brook’s campus. All of the fitness areas all over campus are always packed, and students aren’t feeling like they’re getting their money’s worth. Freshman Tess Smith said, “If I’m paying this much for a student activity fee, I don’t want to walk into a gym where there’s no room to work out or do anything.”
This problem was realized back in fall 1999, when Sue DiMonda started working for Stony Brook. “The Office of Student Affairs came to us with this problem and we started working on how to solve it,” DiMonda said. Much work has been done to find the right architects, the right spot on campus, and what exactly the facility needs. The Student Advisory Board for the Campus Recreation Center met with Sasaki Associates in 2006 to figure out what exactly they were going to do with the building. Sasaki Associates has worked on other college recreation centers at MIT, Cornell University, and the University at Albany.
Sasaki and the Board decided to put the CRC between the Sports complex and the Student Union. The entrance will be on the side by the Sports Complex. The ground-breaking ceremony is expected to be held sometime in June 2009.
