WALK THIS WAY - Arizona Daily Wildcat - University of Arizona

1990: Student Recreation Center opens across Sixth Street from Arizona Stadium.
Strength
and Beauty
A sleek addition to UA’s Student Recreation Center
leaves some ‘in awe,’ with its airy 30,000-squarefoot
weight room and a multipurpose gym
The courtyard features a bouldering wall.
Tim Glass photos
By Mike Chesnick
Seeing the University of Arizona’s
newly expanded Student Recreation
Center can be exhilarating
and overwhelming at the same
time.
The $28.5 million, glass-walled
addition overlooks East Sixth
Street with the Santa Catalina
Mountains visible – letting generous
light come in but shielding out
direct sun – and it increases fresh
air by 30 percent, moved around by
six huge fans with 4-foot blades.
In other words, it doesn’t smell
like a gym.
The addition features a
30,000-square-foot, two-story
workout/weight room with rows of
cutting-edge exercise machines –
spread out to give students room
as they watch cars whizzing by Arizona
Stadium. There’s also a glasswalled
multiuse sports court for
basketball and indoor soccer, and
a pair of sand volleyball courts and
a rock-climbing/bouldering wall in
the courtyard.
“A lot of the students, when they
fi rst walk in, can’t grasp it enough
to work out that fi rst day,” says
John Hamp, a weight room monitor
and recent UA student. “This gym
will compete with any in Arizona
and maybe in the Southwest.”
The 55,000-square-foot addition
opened in January. The number of
entrants has increased nearly 30
percent, but usually you can work
out without waiting. Students pay
a fee of $25 per semester to help
fund the expansion.
Juliette Moore, retiring campus
recreation director, encourages
alumni and parents of current students
and university staff to try
the new facility, between Sixth and
Seventh streets and Highland and
Cherry avenues.
“A lot of parents are in awe,”
Moore relates. “They’ll say, ‘We
didn’t have this when we were
coming to school.”
Indeed. UA students used a
cramped room in the basement of
40 UA VISITOR GUIDE FALL/WINTER 2010