A healthy kind of hangout

I had to see it for myself, the University of Iowa's new $70 million, 20,000-square-foot Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, which opened this week.

University of Iowa senior Lindsey Kannegieter of Parkersburg works out on an elliptical machine Monday, Aug. 2, 2010 at the UI Campus Recreation and Wellness Center in Iowa City. The facility took nearly two years to build at a cost of nearly $70 million. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

It's a block from my office, so I've been watching its slow construction for more than a year.

I'll admit, I cocked an eyebrow when I heard the price tag. I'm all for physical fitness, but did UI students really need something quite this deluxe - a leisure pool with video board and lazy river? It seemed a bit much.

So I headed over Monday to check it out. I wasn't alone. UI Recreational Services Director Harry Ostrander told a Gazette reporter that people started lining up that morning at 6 a.m. There still was a queue when I arrived, tennies in hand, just after 5 p.m.

The UI's more than 30,000 students automatically are members of the wellness center. These folks in line were faculty, staff and community residents - who also can join for a small fee.

Their excitement was palpable, and I heard more than a few oohs and aahs as we explorers showed ourselves around the massive building's three floors. Is it strange to call a gym exciting? Before you answer, let me share some seemingly unrelated news.

Also this week, the UI moved up the ranks in the Princeton Review's annual list of “Top Party Schools,” to ninth from its long-held position at 12th. The UI also ranked high on the Princeton list in such dubious categories as least amount of time spent studying and the most hard liquor consumed.

It's not scientific - the rankings are based on surveys e-mailed to students at 373 colleges across the country - but it's nothing to ignore. And rankings like Princeton's create a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: Some students are attracted to the UI because it's a party school. They come here expecting to party, and they do. No big surprise.

Once that reputation is so firmly set, it can be extraordinarily tough to turn the boat around - a whole industry has grown in Iowa City in response to and furthering the culture of excessive drinking - some call it the barification of downtown.

But here, right across from the main library, is a new Campus Recreation and Wellness Center - a beautiful, accessible building dedicated to health. It sends a different message.

A building where already on its opening day, weeks before the start of fall semester, dozens of young people were working out, playing basketball and, yes, floating down the lazy river. That's what's so exciting.

It occurred to me as I was walking around: This place is going to be packed in a month or so.

And if it is, it will have been worth every dime.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com