Press your face up to the glass and gaze in wonder—just be sure to wipe away those nose prints. After more than two years of construction, the Gary M. Sumers Recreation Center will officially open Oct. 29.
Currently, the building sits completed, but empty, on the western edge of campus. Approaching from the east, you enter through a glass door onto an elevated walkway that takes you into a large open space, fed almost entirely by natural light. You have to use your imagination because there’s no equipment here, yet, but this is the fitness center. On the ground floor, just below you, there will be free weights, cardio equipment and weight machines. Right now, it’s light, it’s airy—everything is white. It’s such a stark contrast to the dungeon that is the current weight room.
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Arushee Agrawal | Student LifeA redesigned and revamped gymnasium within the Sumers Center, a subset of the new Athletic Complex. The Complex will open in late October.
On the same floor as the equipment is a space called the “Zen Den.” There, you’ll find motorized massage chairs—which students can rent—and a massage therapy room. There is also a spin studio complete with black lights.
The Sumers Center also includes new recreational courts, which will replace the ones in the current Athletic Complex. In the new rec gym, large white curtains can be pulled down from the ceiling to separate the three courts, which can be used for basketball, volleyball or badminton. One edge of the wood floor is stained with an image of Brookings Hall.An image of the Gateway Arch rises over that. At the far end are the Francis Field gates. The Sumers Center replaces the old Francis Gymnasium, which was built in 1903 for the 1904 Summer Olympics. Francis was much more utilitarian than it’s newer counterpart. No massage chairs, no drop-down curtains—just a single basketball court and elevated track, flanked by some locker rooms and coaches’ offices in the basement and on either side. All that’s left of the old building is the front facade, now with “Sumers” etched above the stone archway, and the Lopata alumni room—originally an administrative and multipurpose space that will now host alumni receptions and larger staff meetings. Andrew Koch, the facilities manager, kept several souvenirs from the demolition. One was an unidentifiable alcohol bottle (empty, unfortunately) that was found in a gap between several bricks.
Not much is physically left of the old gymnasium, but the Sumers Center pays homages to Washington University’s Olympic history in other ways.
“The architects wanted to recreate the old feel of the Francis Gymnasium. So when you’re in there, you’ll notice the ceiling is very similar to what we had in Francis Gymnasium,” Koch said.
The fitness center ceiling has a retro feel with a modern aesthetic. Giant ceiling fans rotate lazily and are attached to a network of white beams that cross the width of the space. Those beams hold up the pitched roof like a summer camp bunk—or a turn-of-the-century Olympic complex.
Aside from that, the two new exercise spaces that sit at the far end of the fitness center are named Olympic Studio and Studio 1904 in clear tribute.
Save for the stray broken outlet or chipped paint, the building is done, but the Athletic Department is keeping the building empty and closed for now. One might think that the University is closing the center to keep it shiny and new for when the national media descend on Wash. U. for debate coverage come October, but the real reason is still debate-related, but much more practical. When CNN, NBC, CBS and other news media outlets do come to campus to cover the debate, the Sumers Center will serve as their headquarters. That means all the exercise equipment, balls, weights and elliptical machines would have had to be moved back out to accommodate them and then in again after the debate.
“Do we set [the equipment] up, let the students use it for two to three weeks, take it away from them, potentially void warranties because of the moves back and forth, store it off-site for a month and then install it for a week and and a half to two weeks and re-open it?” Koch said. “Rather than that, we thought it was a much better idea to continue holding this building as closed and not available for use and then open it all at once.”
The Athletic Department is treating Oct. 29 like a campus celebration. The grand opening of the Sumers Center will be an all-day event that will feature all the recreational options the department has to offer. There will be bubble soccer, logrolling in an inflatable pool out-front and paddleboarding in I.E. Millstone Pool. There will also be giveaways like Fitbits and bicycles.
What the Recreation Department is hoping, though, is that the Sumers Center can serve as another central space for students.
“You have your residence halls, you have your academic buildings, you have the university center,” Director of Recreation Sports and Campus Fitness Bryan Lenz said. “We really hope that the Sumers Center will serve as another one of those hubs of student activity.”
Conceptually, the Sumers Center is designed to lower the barrier to recreation. The weight room isn’t in a basement. The rec gym is more centrally located. There will be twice as many exercise classes and more personal training. The department is even looking to add some outdoor activities, like kayaking and hiking.
The Sumers Center adds space for all of this to happen, but it also provides what Lenz believes is a necessary separation between varsity and recreation. Besides some offices and locker rooms, the Sumers Center is entirely dedicated to students who also aren’t athletes.
“If you’d go into our current weight room right now, it’s overrun with our varsity athletes,” Lenz said. “It’s intimidating; it’s not accessible to our general recreational participants.”
The Sumers Center is also physically separated from the rest of the Athletic Complex, allowing it to stay open during special events in the Field House and NCAA tournament games.
“For far too long on this campus, our recreation facilities have been underserved,” Lenz said. “That changes on Oct. 29.”