The IBC Student Recreation Center closed for the summer on Friday to start a $2.7 million renovation.
Campus Recreation will add more cardio machines and remove two of the facility’s four racquetball courts, The Temple News reported in November. The facility’s main entrance, lockers and restrooms will be renovated, and the university will install additional gender-inclusive restrooms, wrote John Doman, the director of Campus Recreation, in an email to The Temple News.
The IBC will also get new flooring, lighting and paint, Doman wrote. The layout on the second floor will be rearranged to accommodate new fitness machines.
Friday was the last day students could access the gym, and the facility is expected to re-open at the start of Fall 2019, according to a Campus Recreation release. Temple University Fitness Center and the Student Training and Recreation Complex will have extended hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Fridays throughout the summer, Doman wrote.
After designing the renovation for $202,000, the Board of Trustees approved the project’s final cost of $2.7 million during its public session in December.
Nicole Skatuler, a senior kinesiology major, normally does not go to the IBC because it is mostly attended by men, she said. The money could be better spent elsewhere, Skatuler added.
“There’s just more stuff they could spend the money on, like Tuttleman Counseling [Services], instead of more gyms,” Skatuler said.
Miyalani Wagner, an undeclared freshman in the Klein College of Media and Communication, used the racquetball courts at the IBC before it closed, she said.
Given that the university has two other gyms, renovating the IBC is not totally necessary, Wagner added.
“I guess it’s an OK use of money, but they do have two other gyms,” Wagner said. “It’s not something that’s extremely necessary.”
Corey Bowerman, a sophomore kinesiology major, thinks it would be helpful to spread students out across different gyms, but doesn’t understand why it costs so much to renovate the IBC, he said.
“There’s not that much room in STAR,” he said. “They should’ve just made STAR bigger.”
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