Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center

Dr. Jean-Noel Thompson, vice president and dean of student life, released the following schedule leading up to the Sept. 2 grand opening of the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center:

• Aug. 9 – TechnoGym equipment installed
• Aug. 15 – Receive certificate of occupancy
• Aug. 15-17 – Furniture arrives
• Aug. 22 – Office and operational staff move in
• Aug. 27 – Opening event for Board of Trustees and major donors (invitation only)
• Sept. 2 – Campus-wide grand opening and celebration

As you can see, Abilene Christian University is scheduled to have official ownership of the building in just 26 days.

The changes are becoming increasingly noticeable as the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center speeds toward completion, now less than a month away.

As plans take shape for a Sept. 2 grand opening, crews race to complete the 116,000-square-foot renovation and expansion of Abilene Christian University’s Gibson Health and Wellness Center. The Medical and Counseling Care Center is essentially complete, exterior brick is nearly finished, and the courts and floors of the basketball courts and lobby are in place.

Meanwhile, work has begun in earnest on the outdoor basketball court east of the facility and resurfacing the adjacent parking lot (a familiar site in recent years for the notoriously troublesome patch of asphalt). Photos and details after the jump. More »

Get ready for RecFest.

The Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center will open Friday, Sept. 2, with a ceremony at the facility’s main entrance immediately after Abilene Christian University students are dismissed from Chapel at 11:30 a.m.

From then, the center will be open nearly continuously for 36 hours — with a couple of hours off to clean up Saturday morning, said Brian Devost, the facility’s executive director.

“It’s going to be a marathon,” he said. “It’s pretty much a free-for-all.”

And, yes, that’s free. For all faculty, staff and students who want to show up and participate in the all-night opening celebration.

The Money Center will be open all afternoon and evening Friday for tours and use, but the official RecFest won’t begin until 11 p.m., when a slew of co-ed tournaments — volleyball, basketball, soccer, inner-tube water polo, water relay, foul-shot competition, racquetball, shuffleboard (full-size variety) and badminton — will kick off. Meanwhile, workout equipment, the outdoor basketball court, jogging track and bouldering wall will be open for free play.

Dr. Kerri Hart, director of training and fitness programs, will provide demonstrations of the facility’s new exercise classes, and the new leisure pool will be open for use when tournaments are not taking place. Late-night food is likely, Devost said, as is a screening of the movie Jaws for those floating on inner tubes in the pool areas.

And if that wasn’t enough, students upon their arrival are entered into hourly drawings for door prizes.

“The whole night is going to be open to the students — and the faculty and staff if they want to come, as well,” Devost said. “It should be pretty exciting.”

The Money Center will likely close between 6-8 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 3, to allow for cleaning, Devost said, then reopen for normal use.

The new loading dock entrance faces south, diverting truck traffic away from the rec center.

As construction on the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center heads toward its final month, construction also is wrapping up on a change to the McGlothlin Campus Center directly related to the new facility.

The Campus Center’s north loading dock, which faced north and had access through the parking lot east of Gibson Health and Physical Education Center. But the main entrance to the SRWC is expected to create much more pedestrian traffic in the path of the trucks accessing the dock. So the dock has been reconfigured; it now faces south, and all vehicle traffic will come from Campus Center Road, which connects to East North 16th Street.

A blogger with an iPhone can only do so much, which is why, every so often, we ask a professional photographer to capture the state of the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center as it speeds toward completion at the end of August. Here are some pictures taken by Abilene photographer Steve Buttman:

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Dates have been set: The Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center will be open to Abilene Christian University students on Sept. 2, the first Friday of classes for the fall semester.

Here’s what the summer looks like heading toward that momentous event:

• Principal construction and city inspections end with granting ACU certificate of occupancy: Aug. 17
• Technogym begins installing and setting up exercise equipment: Aug. 17
• Policy and facilities training for student workers: Aug. 24-26
• Grand opening ceremonies for Board of Trustees and major donors: Aug. 27
• Technogym training for student workers: Aug. 29-30
• Grand opening for students: Sept. 2
• RecFest: Sept. 2-3

More details on both grand openings and the subsequent RecFest will be coming soon.

Crews this week began installing the maple basketball court inside the newly renovated single gym on the facility's northeast corner.

It’s not the outside but the inside that counts.

That’s true at least for the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center, where progress on the interior has made great strides in recent weeks, while crews slowly but surely come closer to completing brick installation on the facility’s exterior walls.

Photos and details after the jump.

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Brian Devost took over as executive director of the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center last week — one of the newest and most high-profile jobs on the Abilene Christian University campus, given the center’s expected prominence on campus, physically and recreationally.

So far, so good.

“It’s everything I thought it would be and more,” Devost said, talking in the sparse confines of his temporary office in the Hunter Welcome Center. “We’re like nomads, going around to different offices, trying to find places to meet.”

Devost toured the center when he came to campus for an interview, but a couple of months had passed, so one of his first things to do was take another look at the 116,000-square-foot facility he will oversee.

“My first impression was the students are going to just be wowed when they see the finished product,” he said. “It’s going to be state-of-the-art everything. It’ll be amazing. It’s exciting to be a part of this.”

Of course, the three months or so between now and the facility’s grand opening will require more work than simply the occasional tour. Devost said he has plenty to do.

“There’s a lot of little things,” he said. “We ned to be contacting a lot of people, making sure we’re connecting the dots. … Typically, the most difficult (thing) is the staffing, but Joel [Swedlund] and [Dr.] Kerri [Hart] have already done that. The training, developing a culture, so to speak, of what we’re expecting service-wise, how the students will interact with each other.”

Training of the five dozen students who will work in the center begins Aug. 15, two weeks before the start of classes.

“That’s a whole schedule unto itself,” he said, “but it doesn’t just stop there. The thing will be amazing.”

In the meantime, Devost will be working with Hart, director of programming, Swedlund, director of facility operations, and other voices on campus to determine everything from the type of furniture to place on the outdoor patio to what kind of policies and procedures will govern the students, faculty and staff working out in the building.

On a broader scale, Devost sees his job as developing a better sense of the whole-wellness philosophy ACU wants to encourage through the Money Center.

And it all needs to happen in 85 days or so.

Framing hung in the SRWC lobby gives a glimpse of the curves and circles students will see when they first enter the facility.

The projected date for sealing in the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center has come and gone with brick and windows still needing to be installed, but crews believe they remain on pace to hand over the keys to Abilene Christian University around Aug. 15, two weeks before the start of classes.

In several places, including the Medical and Counseling Care Center, work is all but complete, with flooring the only step left. Others, such as the aquatic center, are awaiting crews to return from a brief foray spent renovating the athletics and Exercise Science and Health offices. Here’s what’s happening and what’s about to happen:

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Brian Devost, executive director of the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center, began work yesterday in his temporary office on the second floor of the Hunter Welcome Center. Meanwhile, crews working on the center are nearly finished applying brick to the building’s exterior. We’ll have more on both these developments in the coming days.