Iowa City Press Citizen, IA
10-20-07
UI officials hail facility
Students to chip in $60M for new recreation center
By Brian Morelli
Iowa City Press-Citizen
University of Iowa officials celebrated a new health and wellness facility that is due to start construction next month, but students may not be smiling when they have to fork over an extra $219 a year to pay for it.
Officials say the $69 million Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, expected to open in fall 2009, is a much needed update to recreational services at UI -- the current facility, the Field House, is about 80 years old -- for both athletes and the general student body.
"This project is candidly many years overdue," said Robert Downer, a member of the Iowa state Board of Regents who helped secure the funding. "It strikes me ... that this institution has been able to achieve as much as it has with woefully outdated facilities."
The new 215,000-square-foot facility to be built at the southwest corner of
Burlington and Madison streets will feature a 50-meter competitive pool with a separate diving station, leisure pool, 54-foot climbing wall, three multi-purpose gymnasiums courts and a 9,000-square-foot wellness center. This facility would serve as a compliment to the Field House.
"Recreation services are essential to the mission of the university," UI President
Sally Mason said. "We must be committed to the wellness of our students."
Officials at the ceremony pointed to the facility dovetailing with an increased focus on wellness and fighting health concerns such as obesity, heart disease, reducing health care costs and the demands on the public health system and providing another alternative to drinking alcohol.
To pay for this, students will chip in $60 million and $9 million will come from the athletics department. In the first full year of operation in FY 2011, student recreation fees will jump from $5 to the mandatory $219 annually to compensate.
That would last for at least 25 years, the life of the bond.
This is substantially more than what students at Iowa's other public universities pay. At University of Northern Iowa, there is a mandatory recreation and wellness

fee of $19 annually, and at Iowa State University, students pay $86 annually for recreation and recreation facility fees.
Currently, students must pay additional fees each time they use UI's recreation facilities, but when the $219 fee goes into affect, that will cover the additional entry costs for basic facility use.
A string of student leaders has backed the project as it has developed over the past five years, including current UI Student Government President Barrett
Anderson.
"I want to stress how important it will be to the students, not only to athletes like on the swim team, but to average students," he said. "My only regret is that I won't see it completed."