Academic Exercise

For years, most UC Irvine students had to settle for giving their brains a workout. But this month, they finally got a place to focus on their corporeal selves with the opening of the nearly 100,000-square-foot Anteater Recreation Center.

Located in a rustic corner of the east campus, students say the center is everything Crawford Hall, the campus’ crowded old gym--which had to be shared with intercollegiate teams--is not.

“There was no motivation to work out at Crawford Hall,” said junior Shelley Ali, one of the 2,500 students and staff who use the new gym daily. “Here it’s open and bright. There it’s so dreary.”

The $26-million center includes stationary bikes, weightlifting equipment, basketball and volleyball courts, a 25-meter swimming pool and 35-foot rock-climbing wall. A running track circles the second floor.

Students agreed to pay for the recreation center nearly three years ago when they voted overwhelmingly to charge themselves $88 a quarter, an assessment that also pays for upgrading the old gym.

Most of the area around the new gym is empty land, and plans call for eventual expansion and the building of several softball and soccer fields. In addition, the athletic center is supposed to be the center of a residential complex of 8,000 units to help accommodate an expected 25% increase in enrollment in the next decade.

The building of the center was not without controversy. A local 4-H Club and the Wilderness Horse Owners Assn., which had tended animals at the center site for nearly 30 years, were forced to move.

The private Farm School, run under the auspices of UCI’s School of Social Sciences and located behind the gym, was allowed to stay, although people connected to the elementary school were afraid the gym would ruin the rustic ambience they considered vital.

So far the big gym and the little school have coexisted.

“Each of us is finding ways to be good neighbors to the other,” said Michael Butler, director of the school.