Students might see a $100 increase in student fees to fund the construction of an additional recreation center, said Kim Kloeppel, vice president for Student Affairs.
Students voted to support the building of a recreation center on campus, according to a survey conducted in February. Fifty-eight percent of those who took the survey said a recreation center would improve the quality of life on campus.
Kloeppel said plans for the center are still being fine-tuned and that the Board of Regents must approve them before construction can begin. Kloeppel said the planned opening date for the center is 2011, so construction could begin as soon as the fall.
Kloeppel said Van H. Gilbert Architects held a two-day event in which they showcased designs and presented students with slides detailing the options available for the center, including a climbing wall, cardio and weight rooms, and multipurpose rooms for playing indoor soccer and indoor hockey. The multilevel floor plan also includes retail space. The current plan considers attaching the center to Johnson Center with a bridge. Also, the facility would be partially built on parking lot A, directly east of George Pearl Hall.
The center is expected to cost $52 million, Kloeppel said.
The survey gathered responses from 3,263 students and was conducted by Student Affairs. According to the results, students were mostly in favor of the center, but they liked it less as the proposed cost increased.
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"The idea of this is all student-focused, and it's really toward the students and what their needs are and what they want," Kloeppel said.
Kloeppel said the increase in fees wouldn't take effect until the project was completed and that there would be no immediate fee increase.
"Those fees would be specifically designated for the recreation center," Kloeppel said. "We're trying to keep them as low as we can."
Student Sean DeBuck said the project is coming at a bad time and that the millions of dollars it would cost could be used in other areas.
"Student Services are struggling to get by. Educational programs are struggling. Professors aren't being hired; some are threatening to resign," he said. "We have a $50 million project that doesn't even offer anything new. Johnson Center is well-equipped - it's just an insult."
ASUNM President Ashley Fate said planners are still working on the logistics of the design, amenities and incorporating everything into the building to make it fit students' needs.
"There's nothing duplicated in this design that's the same as Johnson Center, with the exception of a weight room and cardio room, which is what we found on the survey to be the most prevalent things students wanted," she said.
Fate said the project has long been a priority for her.
"We've just moved forward on it since we made the promise to the students," Fate said.
She said the benefits far outweigh the costs, and now that construction and supply prices are lower, it makes sense to begin work as soon as possible.
"If we procrastinated on this for two years, the amount of the project would just skyrocket," she said. "We wouldn't be able to get the bang for our buck that we currently can."
Fate said the recreation center will help retain students and draw new ones to UNM.
DeBuck said ASUNM and President David Schmidly are supporting a multimillion dollar recreation center but that the survey didn't offer an alternative to that cost.
"A lot of emphasis was on how cool it would be to have a recreation center," DeBuck said. "What about how cool it would be to have student services and education where our priorities need to be? There's a whole realm of issues that they neglected."
Fate said the recreation center is still in the planning stages but that it is going forward. The Senate has passed a resolution in favor of moving forward, and that's been sent to the Board of Regents for approval.
"It's progressing. It's definitely moving forward," she said.
