Rice breaks ground for a new multipurpose Recreation and Wellness Center

Rice breaks ground for a new multipurpose Recreation and Wellness Center

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Rice University broke ground April 22 for a $41 million Recreation and Wellness Center that will offer students, faculty and staff state-of-the-art workout and health facilities for everything from competitive swimming and billiards to nutritional counseling and meditative classroom space.

The two-story, 103,000-square-foot building will house two indoor basketball courts, four racquetball courts, two squash courts, a 50-meter outdoor competition pool, a 2,500-square-foot recreation pool, cardio-fitness equipment, weights, a dance studio, billiards, table tennis, two outdoor lighted basketball courts, locker rooms and a ”wellness” courtyard. Scheduled to open in August 2009, it will also serve as the new home of the Rice Wellness Center.

	JEFF FITLOW
	Donor David Gibbs speaks to a crowd at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Rice Recreation and Wellness Center. He was joined onstage by, from left, Student Association President Matt Youn, Director of Athletics Chris Del Conte, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Jim Crownover, donor Barbara Gibbs, Rice President David Leebron, donor Ralph O’Connor and Graduate Student Association President Michael Contreras.

Rice board chair Jim Crownover ’65 said “central” is the word the trustees have always associated with the new rec center. “It’s central in terms of location and its ability to draw on many constituencies,” he said. “And it’s also central from an immediacy standpoint — something we think we really have to do now.”

President David Leebron agreed. “This is one project that I absolutely thought we could not do without. It is essential to all we have come to envision about Rice and about what our aspirations are for Rice, and it really embodies what our students are as well,” he said.

“Rice students have always studied hard, and now they will have a wonderful new facility where they can play just as hard,” Leebron said. “We know that a healthy mind and a healthy body go hand in hand, and this facility can accommodate almost everyone’s needs and interests. It will become yet another place, along with our new Brochstein Pavilion, where we can come together for informal activities and interaction.”

On Thursday Rice dedicated the pavilion, a glassed-in café located on the west side of Fondren Library in the university’s Central Quadrangle. Both facilities are part of a major construction initiative at Rice as the university prepares to increase its student body and raise its profile as a premier international research university under Leebron’s 10-point Vision for the Second Century.
 
The Recreation and Wellness Center will be funded solely through philanthropy. “We are particularly grateful to David and Barbara Gibbs for making the lead gift for this historic project,” Leebron said. “We also want to thank Ralph O’Connor and Carl Isgren for their generous gifts.”

David and Barbara Gibbs are both alumni of Rice. David received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering — both in 1971. Barbara received a B.A. in Spanish in 1973.  She went on to earn an M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 1977. David is now president of David K. Gibbs Associates, a real estate agency that he established in 1978.

“My Rice academic training prepared me well for my career, but many of my favorite memories of my Rice years involve playing intramurals and participating on college teams,” David Gibbs said. Introducing himself as a “gym rat,” Gibbs said he plays NBA — Noon Basketball Assembly — at noon every Tuesday and Thursday at the Rice gym with coaches, staff and professors. “Lifelong fitness is my goal,” he said, adding that he was excited about the opportunity to make the lead gift for a facility at Rice that relates to his lifelong passion.

Barbara Gibbs is equally passionate about the pursuit of wellness. She said that in contrast to her medical training in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Western medicine practitioners in the last decade have started embracing the tenants and techniques of Eastern medicine. “Recognition of the mind-body-spirit connection allows a more comprehensive understanding and approach to wellness,” she said. “The new center will play an essential role in fostering this holistic approach.” She said the center should help Rice recruit and retain students, faculty and staff of the highest caliber and ensure that “each member of the Rice community has the opportunity to receive the most rewarding experience possible.”

JEFF FITLOW
Donor Barbara Gibbs presented President David Leebron with a potted palm tree as a symbolic gesture to the landscaping plans for the Recreation and Wellness Center.

Barbara presented Leebron with a potted palm tree as a symbolic gesture to the landscaping plans for the Recreation and Wellness Center. “Bringing palm trees to the Rice campus has been a top presidential priority, rumored to be a nonnegotiable priority,” she said.
                   
Ralph O’Connor, a trustee emeritus, served as a term governor at Rice from 1967 to 1976 and then as a trustee from 1976 to 1988. He returned as a trustee from 1994 until 1996. He received a B.A. in biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1951 and completed Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program in 1967. He is founder and CEO of the investment firm Ralph S. O’Connor & Associates, which he established in 1987.

O’Connor said he’s been thinking about a recreation center for Rice for the past 24 years after witnessing the rapport between a professor and student who worked out together at Emory University in Atlanta. “Sports is very important,” O’Connor said. “Everybody can’t be a varsity athlete, but by golly, everybody can come out and play, whether they’re playing badminton or whether they’re playing basketball or just running on the track or using this exercise equipment that all these young people seem to like today.”

Carl Isgren is a Rice alum and a trustee. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in accounting and economics from Rice in 1961. He was elected to the board in 2004. Isgren retired in 1997 as president and CEO of Owen Healthcare Inc. after negotiating the merger of Owen and Cardinal Healthcare. Under his leadership, Owen became the leading provider of hospital pharmacy management services in the U.S.

Leebron also acknowledged contributions from the Class of 2007, who made the rec center its senior class project.

Matt Youn, president of the Student Association, and Michael Contreras, president of the Graduate Student Association, also thanked the donors and expressed their excitement about the new facility on behalf of the undergraduate and graduate students.

The new rec center will be located at the northwest corner of Alumni Drive and Laboratory Road, kitty-corner from the Student Center and adjacent to the north campus recreational fields. As it did with other major construction projects on campus, Rice relocated several mature elm and oak trees to make room for the building without reducing the campus’s famous tree population.

The Athletics Department will manage the center. “Nearly every Rice student participates in sports of some kind, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they will be thrilled with all of the options available in the new Recreation and Wellness Center,” Del Conte said. “This facility will add another great dimension to the total Rice experience for students, as well as for faculty and staff.”

	TOMMY LAVERGNE
	Donors and dignitaries waved flags to signal the start of the recreation center construction.

Project manager Joe Buchanan said the building will feature several distinctive design elements:

About admin