VIDEO: Tour of Iowa's new rowing boathouse

I toured the new Iowa boathouse today, along with other fellow scribes and journalist types. Here is some video of the place, along with a story published Sept. 4 about the building itself.

IOWA CITY - The University of Iowa women's rowing team will move into its $7.33 million boathouse next week, senior associate athletics director Jane Meyer said Sept. 3.

The boathouse is named after former Iowa women's basketball player P. Sue Beckwith, who donated $1 million for what Meyer calls a "state of the art" facility. Meyer also touts the facility as the first new green building on the Iowa campus.

Iowa officials will dedicate the building Sept. 18. The athletics department paid for all but $1 million in construction costs, which is being covered by Iowa's recreation department. Iowa's men's club team and the community rowing club also will use the facility.

Meyer said the temperature is kept between 40 and 50 degrees because the building is geothermal with wells in a circle drive that heat and cool the building. The building has heated floors in the bays.

"The way the building is oriented -- north, south, east, west -- maximizes sunlight," she said. "It doesn't allow heat into the building, and it doesn't allow heat to go out."

The two-story building was slightly behind schedule because of flooding last year. The boathouse originally was built to absorb one floor of floodwater, but now a split-level floor between the two stories was built in case of flooding.

The boathouse is located in Terrell Mill Park between the Iowa River and Dubuque Street. The two-story facility is 22,501 square feet. The rowing team has been training in a vacant portion of a building without showers or restroom facilities.

Meyer took three rowing athletes on a tour this summer and said she was met with tears of joy.

"Just to see that excitement (makes it) worthwhile," she said.

Iowa will show off the boathouse Oct. 25 at the annual Head of the Iowa regatta along the Iowa River.