The University of Connecticut’s new Student Recreation Center, opening Monday at 6 a.m., features a bicycle repair shop, a 56-foot tall climbing wall and three racquetball courts, among several other amenities.
The Rec Center is four stories tall and 191,000 square feet of area. It will offer spin, kickboxing and strength training group fitness classes, as well as yoga and other wellness-centered group classes. It also contains a 25-lane competitive swimming pool and a three-lane recreational pool.
An outdoor adventure center will be available for use, as will a mind-body studio with an outdoor terrace, a four-court gymnasium, a medical training room, a 25-lane competitive swimming pool and a three-lane recreational pool.
UConn Recreation’s core goals are to offer recreational activities that encourage a healthy lifestyle and promote personal well-being, to foster opportunities that encourage personal growth and challenge individuals to develop new skills, to engage programming partnerships with the campus community and to promote leadership development by providing work experiences through student employment, according to their website.
Photos by Charlotte Lao / The Daily Campus.
“UConn Recreation is committed to offering safe and quality programs, facilities, and services to the University of Connecticut community in order to foster personal growth and wellness,” the website reads. “We promote healthy lifestyle choices in an environment that values, embraces, and enriches individual differences, in which customer satisfaction is the priority.”
Construction on the Recreation Center began in mid-2017, after the design phase began in October 2015. The building, which cost $100 million, will be certified as a LEED Gold project, according to the rec center website.
Undergraduate and graduate students in Storrs can use the building through a fee all students are required to pay each semester for the next 30 years. Undergraduate students will pay $250 per semester and graduate students will pay $200 a semester.
Students at the regional campuses, UConn Health and UConn Law can use the gym by opting into a fee on their bill, UConn Today said.
The university expects the rec center to be a factor for high school students deciding between UConn and another school.
“Research has shown that there are three primary factors that students look at when they’re wanting to attend colleges and universities—the first is majors, the second is cost, and the third is recreational opportunities,” UConn Recreation Executive Director Cyndi Costanzo told UConn Today.
Costanzo said the new Rec Center will be transformative to the 2,500 student participants they see per day.
“With the new center, conservative estimates put us at 6,000 participants a day and well over a million for a year,” Costanzo said. “If we consider ourselves an active community of engaged students, it is going to be transformative to what they do.”
Gabriella DeBenedictis is the news editor for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at gabriella.debenedictis@uconn.edu.
