The dust has settled at the Colorado Mesa University Hamilton Recreation Center and students can now enjoy what Director Lynn Wilson calls a shift. A shift that was spurred by the growth of CMU's swim team.
"We shifted things around to accommodate the needs of the swim team. The team has grown so they needed bigger locker rooms," Wilson said.
What was once the spin room is now a larger men's swim locker room. The women's swim team locker room also recently reopened and swimmers are ecstatic over the changes.
"They're really nice!" said swimmer Natalie Saul. "We used to be a little cramped, but now we have more space and feel like a community."
Construction started in July and continued into the first few weeks of the semester. The construction was kept to a minimum in order to lessen disruption to student use of the recreation center, but the end results have made a huge improvement to both the swim team and the general facilities.
The spin room was moved to the upper area of the Hamilton Recreation Center above the basketball courts. Although no new equipment was added, the spin room redesign offers new theatre-style rows, additional space, two entrances and an unobstructed view of the instructor.
Two classrooms, 153 and 154, were also absorbed in the shift in order to add an Olympic lifting area. This lifting area is what one student called 'a pocket', giving people a more private option for lifting. The remodel at the recreation center also fixed issues that existed with the original layout.
"We used to have lifting on a second floor so dropping of the weights was sometimes an issue. It was loud for yoga classes and that sort of thing. Moving it down to the ground floor eliminated that issue," said Wilson. "The new lifting area and cycle studio are finished with a new 18mm Plae brand flooring that is super thick and sound absorbing."
The shift is not the only thing the Hamilton Recreation Center has been doing to enrich the lives of students. They have been focusing on creating a comfortable environment for students both inside the gym and through their programming outside the recreation center like goat yoga.
"When you come here, we're not talking grades. There's no syllabus." Wilson said "All the things that stress students throughout the day, this is where they should come and not think about them."