Fitness center opens at Cal State
Daily Bulletin 4/4/07
Among visitors to the $13 million, 34,000-square-foot, two-story facility that opened Tuesday were Mark Agars and Jason Reimer, psychology professors.
"It's gorgeous," Agars said.
"I'm impressed," Reimer added.
"The size, the amount of equipment they have - it's a real fitness center," Agars said.
More real, that is, than the 3,000-square-foot building - known around campus as "the tent" - that used to house exercise equipment.
Now, in an 8,800-square-foot space, treadmills, bikes and elliptical machines form neat rows facing televisions and windows looking out on the campus. There's also a section filled with weights and weight machines. And a gym. And rooms for dance and aerobics.
And in one corner sits a pair of bikes attached to a video game console. The harder the persons on the bikes pedal, the faster their imaginary cars race on a screen.
"Oh dude, are you serious?" one student said, amazed at the find. "It is like that."
Rick Craig, director of recreational sports at Cal State, said the new center will hopefully foster a sense of community, encouraging people to spend more time on campus.
Members of the school's alumni association can buy memberships to the center for $140 a year, Craig said. That will be the price for faculty and staff, too, after an initial period of lower rates, he added.
Through quarterly fees of $37, students are paying off a 30-year bond that funded the new gym, which took about three years to complete, Craig said.
Marie Valentine, a graduate student in counseling, took time out of her day to pull herself up the rock wall.
After slithering back down, she shared her excitement over the new facilities.
She used the rock wall last quarter in a mountaineering class, and said she hoped the center would convince more students to get in shape while having fun. The old gym was "small and crowded at certain hours," she said.
And the new one? Well, she said, smiling, "it's very new."