University mulls expansion of athletic facilities

The University is in the process of evaluating on-campus recreation facilities and has hired a planning and management firm to generate ideas for adapting current facilities and building new projects.

The survey comes on the heels of the 2004 report of the Task Force for Health and Well-Being, which pointed out weaknesses in the health and fitness programs on campus, as well as the inadequacy of Dillon Gym and other recreational athletic facilities.

Tim Miller, a vice president at Brailsford & Dunlavey, the firm working on the project, said it was hired to do a one-day brainstorming session on wellness and recreation last fall, and it was decided that "further study on what students, faculty and staff see as top priorities" was necessary before beginning to plan major renovations to Dillon.

The Office of Campus Life sent an online survey to a random selection of the Princeton population in mid-February and distributed printed surveys to people in the survey sample who do not typically use email, Vice President of Campus Life Janet Dickerson said. In all, 809 students and 734 faculty and staff completed the survey.

The survey, Miller said, was meant to determine "current usage patterns and specific activities members of the University community participate in" and found that the most common use of the gym facilities was for fitness and weight training.

Home to treadmills, elliptical machines and free weights, survey respondents rated Stephens Fitness Center their favorite part of Dillon, Miller said. Group fitness classes, including yoga and Pilates, also ranked high on respondents' lists, followed by jogging and swimming.

Miller said that these are generally the most popular parts of university recreation facilities. At Princeton, however, those facilities and programs are followed in popularity by squash, "usually at the very bottom of the list" at other schools.

Dickerson and Miller both emphasized that plans are in their early stages and that it's too early to predict what the University's recreational facilities will look like in a few years. Miller said he thought a project would probably involve "renovat[ing] most of the existing Dillon Gym" and extending the building into the Dillon Court South area of trailers, commonly referred to as "the pit."

Stephens Fitness Center will probably be at least three times larger than it is today, Miller said. Gymnasium facilities will still be multipurpose spaces that can house varsity, junior varsity and intramural athletics after the likely overhaul.

This past August, the University spent $600,000 on painting throughout Dillon, as well as renovating the locker rooms, tiling the floors outside the locker rooms and completing minor repairs. That effort was just a facelift for the 58-year-old building; future projects are expected to total in the millions of dollars.

The focus of the project is "wellness in a very broad sense," Miller said.