The Sports and Recreation Center is scheduled to open in Fall 2012. Until that time, four web cameras will capture all of the construction activities taking place at the site. Check back often to witness the progress.

View the webcam via WPI’s website.

From left, President Berkey, James Carr '74, WPI Board Chairman Donald Peterson '71, Stuart Kazin '61, and Trustee Judith Nitsch '75 break ground for the new center.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) President Dennis Berkey and members of the WPI Board of Trustees, along with the Moonraker 2.0 robot, broke ground today for a 145,000-square-foot sports and recreation center.  Moonraker 2.0, the student-designed robot that won a $500,000 prize from NASA for its ability to excavate moon dust last year, used its remarkable digging capabilities to kick-off construction of the new center, which will be built into the hillside at the west end of the WPI Quadrangle and is designed to meet LEED certification standards. The facility is scheduled to open in August 2012.

Watch a video of Moonraker 2.0 getting the groundbreaking under way.

“The Sports and Recreation Center is an exciting and much needed addition to the WPI campus,” Berkey said.  The new center will provide substantially more space for our growing population of students, faculty, and staff, and their avid interests in sports and recreation. We are not just building another gym. We are building a place for our community to come together – for competition, for camaraderie, for celebration. We are building a new setting for excellence.”

Recent years have seen an increase in participation in sports at WPI and successful team performances, including winning the Worcester College Cup for top-performing athletic program among its local peers in four of the past six years, and enjoying a 20-percent increase overall in the percentage of wins. Beyond varsity sports, there is also a diversity of student interest in sports and recreation offerings and campus-wide participation in physical fitness.

The new building will overlook the quadrangle to the east and Alumni Field to the west, presenting an attractive two-story facade to the main campus and a dramatic five-story facade to the playing fields below. Featuring state-of-the-art equipment incorporated into a bright, spacious and thoughtfully laid-out space, the new center will be available for use by WPI students, faculty, and staff. It will feature 14,000-square-feet of fitness space, a four-court gymnasium, a competition-length swimming pool, a three-lane elevated jogging track, racquetball and squash courts, rowing tanks, and workout studios.

The center will provide attractive space for large-scale events, such as admissions open houses, career fairs, national academic conferences and alumni events. In addition, the facility will have space dedicated to WPI’s robotics program, and will enable WPI to support regional and national robotics competitions.

Development of the new center is part of the Institute’s seven-year capital plan. Boston-based CannonDesign serves as the architect, and Gilbane Building Co. as the general contractor. Worcester-based Cardinal Construction is the owner’s representative. The facility’s total cost is expected to be approximately $53.2 million.

In 2007, WPI’s Board of Trustees endorsed a policy calling for the design of all future buildings on campus to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification standards from the U.S. Green Building Council.  The center is expected to be the third LEED-certified building on campus. The new facility will utilize 50 solar thermal panels on the roof to heat the pool water, saving more than $50,000 in operating costs and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 4,400 pounds per year, as compared with conventional pool heating. In addition, underground storage tanks will collect 50,000 gallons of rainwater from the roof for the cooling system, reducing the building’s water consumption by more than 800,000 gallons per year. Some of the fitness equipment within the building will generate electricity to reduce the building’s electrical load. The facility will also feature FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) wood for paneling and furniture to protect endangered forests by using wood species that are easily replenished. More than 75 percent of the construction waste will be recycled and diverted from landfills.

• Learn more about the WPI Sports and Recreation Center and see architectural renderings and floor plans.
• Watch NECN’s coverage of the groundbreaking ceremony.
• Read the (Worcester) Telegram & Gazette’s article about the event.

About Moonraker 2.0

Moonraker 2.0, created by Paul’s Robotics, which is led by robotics engineering major Paul Ventimiglia, won the $500,000 NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge in October 2009, beating out 22 other teams of professional engineers and college, university, and high school students.  The NASA challenge required robots to excavate at least 150 kilograms of simulated lunar soil within a 30-minute period, demonstrating a task that will be important for future lunar construction and processing projects. WPI is the only university in the nation to offer bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in robotics engineering.

“The new Sports and Recreation Center will be an inspiring place for the WPI community to come together for camaraderie, competition, and celebration; and is essential to our ability to provide a world class learning and living environment for our campus community,” said WPI President Dennis Berkey. “We are grateful to the Fuller Foundation for helping to make possible this vital new addition to our campus.”

The facility, to be built into the hillside at the west end of the WPI Quadrangle, will house a four-court, 29,000-square-foot gymnasium circled by an elevated three-lane jogging track; a 25-meter pool for swimming and diving with seating for 250 spectators; a 14,000-square-foot fitness center with separate areas for physical education classes; three convertible squash and racquetball courts; an eight-person rowing tank; rooms for dance, yoga, and other recreational activities; multipurpose meeting rooms; well-equipped locker rooms; a training and rehabilitation suite with two hydrotherapy tanks; and offices for coaches, staff members, and students.

In addition to supporting the growing recreational and wellness interests of students and the needs of WPI’s competitive varsity and club sports programs, the building will provide attractive space for large-scale events, including admissions open houses, career fairs, and national academic conferences. It will also have space dedicated to WPI’s robotics program, including a spacious pit area for regional and national robotics competitions.

“The Fuller family is proud to continue its support for WPI by contributing to the Sports and Recreation Center,” said Mark Fuller, chairman of the Fuller Foundation. “We have long admired WPI and recognize the value it brings to its students, to the Worcester community, and to society. This new center of excellence will enrich the campus community and serve as a powerful symbol of the spirit of innovation that marks every aspect of WPI’s approach to education.”

The spacious, multilevel Fuller Atrium will provide views of the Quadrangle and the campus to the east and the playing fields and Bancroft Hill to the west through large expanses of glass. Interior windows will look in on the gymnasium. It will be the first view visitors will have of the new center’s interior, and is expected to be a featured stop on campus tours. The atrium will also be a popular spot for social events and a popular gathering place for the community.

“The spectacular Fuller Atrium will be a lasting reminder of the bond between the Fuller family and WPI,” said Dexter Bailey, vice president for development and alumni relations. “This gift continues a legacy of enlightened philanthropy established by George F. and Sybil Fuller, who were deeply committed to WPI and its mission. George Fuller served for decades as a trustee, beginning in 1920, and the foundation he established has supported the university generously for so many years, starting with a gift in 1964 to establish and endow the George F. Fuller Professorship in Mechanical Engineering.”

Bailey noted that Fuller Foundation’s gifts have already transformed the WPI campus. Previous major gifts have supported the Fuller Residence Center, the Fuller Water Quality Laboratory, the George F. Fuller Laboratories, home to WPI’s Computer Science Department and central computer resources, and the Fuller Chemistry Complex, a modern laboratory facility for general chemistry instruction. The foundation also supports annual scholarships to WPI for Worcester-area students.

President Berkey with Ellen and Stu Kazin ’61 at the 2009 Presidential Founders Dinner

Recognizing the importance of the new Sports and Recreation Center to educating the whole student at WPI, Stu Kazin ’61 and his wife, Ellen, recently supported the project with a generous gift.

Stu Kazin is retired senior vice president of World Wide Operations and Administration for Lotus Development Corp. /IBM in Cambridge, Mass. Kazin was responsible for Lotus’s worldwide manufacturing, distribution and customer operations as well as for worldwide information systems and operations, applications development, end-user computing, and telecommunications. He also oversaw all corporate services worldwide. IBM purchased Lotus in 1995, and Kazin became responsible for all the software manufacturing and delivery for both the physical and electronic software business for IBM. He retired in April 1999 after 14 years with Lotus Development Corporation/IBM.

The new Sports and Recreation Center, which will now include the Ellen and Stu Kazin ’61 Conference Room, is about about strengthening the WPI community, Kazin says. This is a long-standing interest for Kazin, who has played an active role in the life of his alma mater. He served as chair of the Annual Fund Board from 2006 to 2009, and was also an Alumni Council Class Representative. He helped plan his 40th anniversary class reunion in 2001, has been a class agent for many years, and is a member of the PolyClub. Kazin is currently a member of WPI’s Campaign Cabinet, helping to guide and raise funds for the university’s $200 million capital campaign, and is a newly elected member of the WPI Board of Trustees.

Kazin notes that traditionally, WPI students and alumni identify with their academic department, athletic teams, and fraternities, but have not necessarily identified with the university as a whole. He points to the Campus Center, which opened in 2001, as an effective tool in fostering school identity, pride, and community by providing a valuable common meeting ground for students, faculty, and staff.

“The Sports and Recreation Center represents another place where students can get together. It’s another facility that fosters community,” Kazin says.

Kazin, who played varsity soccer during his freshman year at WPI and then became the varsity basketball team manager after being sidelined on the soccer field by a knee injury, also recognizes the importance of sports and fitness to the residential university experience.

“What convinced me to support this project is how important athletics and fitness has become to students today,” he says. “In my time, fitness meant getting out of bed.”

At WPI, nearly 60 percent of students are active in sports. In addition, overwhelming numbers of WPI students recognize personal fitness as a major contributor to quality of life and are accustomed to including exercise in their regular routines.

Kazin adds that sports and recreation facilities are key factors prospective students consider when deciding where to apply to and attend college. The new center, he notes, also represents an opportunity to continue WPI’s recent success in recruiting women students. Harrington Auditorium, the last athletics facility built at WPI, was completed in 1968—the first year undergraduate women were admitted to the university. No athletic facility at WPI has been designed with the needs of women in mind.

“I’d like to see WPI attract more women students, especially as we move toward more biological education,” Kazin says. But the motivation behind the Kazins’ gift to the new Sports and Recreation Center is the facility’s promise of enriching the WPI educational experience for all students.

“As I look at this project, I think it is very important for student life at WPI, and I wanted to make sure it’s supported,” Kazin says.

The Daniels Foundation’s support will help provide the WPI community with a premium sports and exercise center, as well as a hub for community activities that will strengthen a vibrant campus. The completion of the new Sports and Recreation Center also will transform campus both aesthetically and in its ability to provide students and faculty with the highest quality facilities for teaching, research, and project work. It opens up exciting opportunities for turning Alumni Gym into an Innovation Center, solving the demand for campus parking, and creating a true campus quadrangle free from cars and open to pedestrian enjoyment. WPI seeks to raise $30 million toward the $53 million cost of the center.

“The Daniels Foundation’s leadership gift represents an important step forward for this important facility,” says President Dennis D. Berkey. “The Sports and Recreation Center promises to be a stunning and vital addition to WPI’s beautiful campus and a facility that WPI community will enjoy for years to come. I am confident that it will be a point of pride for the Daniels Foundation.”

The Daniels Foundation, which focuses primarily on organizations in Worcester County, shares a long connection to WPI. Fred Harris Daniels graduated from the university in 1873. He served as chairman of the Board of Engineers of the United States Steel Corporation, chief engineer of the American Steel and Wire Company, president of Washburn & Moen Company, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Employees’ Insurance Association and of Norton Company. Daniels held 151 patents, many of which revolutionized the steel industry process of manufacturing.

Daniels three sons—F. Harold Daniels, a former WPI trustee, Dwight C. Daniels, and Clarence W. Daniels—established the Daniels Foundation in 1949. WPI’s Daniels Hall residence was dedicated in honor of their father in 1962. In 2003, the Daniels Foundation gave $90,000 to support the university’s Project-Based Learning Community adacemic initiative, providing office and classroom space on the first floor of Daniels Hall.

When Barbara Donahue first learned about the proposed sports and recreation center at WPI, she knew exactly what she wanted to support. Thanks to Donahue’s generous gift, the WPI crew will train in a state-of-the-art rowing tank housed in the new center.

The new sports and recreation center answers a compelling need on campus for premium fitness space for students, faculty, and staff. The new center will anchor the west side of the Quadrangle, literally and figuratively occupying a place at the heart of campus life. The building will provide 29,000 square feet of space devoted to a four-court gymnasium, workout rooms, wellness classrooms, meeting spaces, a fitness center, and a natatorium housing a modern 25-meter swimming pool and spectator seating. The existing baseball and softball fields will give way to a new artificial turf field constructed atop a 500-space parking garage. Parking areas will be eliminated from the Quad and replaced by open green space. A sweeping renovation of Harrington Auditorium will update courts for varsity basketball and other recreational uses, as well as add and improve locker rooms for men and women. The project also presents an opportunity to renovate Alumni Gym—a historic and beloved campus structure—into academic space to support WPI’s signature project-based curriculum.

The sports and recreation center will provide a hub—on the quadrangle, the social and symbolic center of campus—where athletes can find the space and equipment they need to be competitive, where students, faculty, and staff can come together to play, work out, and keep fit, and where the WPI community and beyond can gather for large-scale events, such as robotics competitions, career fairs, and campus celebrations. The center will not only strengthen students and support them in their quest for personal excellence, but it will heighten the sense of community at WPI, one of the university’s strongest assets and greatest attractions.

WPI seeks to raise $30 million of the $53.2 million estimated total cost of the project. Barbara Donahue’s gift—one of the first to support the new center—honors her late husband, Jim Donahue ’44, as well as his fondness for WPI and his passion for rowing.

“Jim brought rowing to WPI,” she says, explaining that he became a rower in high school in Shrewsbury, Mass. When he came to WPI, however, he discovered that there was no crew. With the entrepreneurial spirit that has always been typical of WPI students, he pulled together eight of his fellow students and borrowed a shell and a coach from Shrewsbury. He rowed on that start-up team for two years until he joined the Navy V-12 program at WPI, which did not allow the men off campus.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Jim served in the Pacific Theater during World War II, eventually as chief engineer of the U.S.S. Stockton. After the war, he began his career as a metallurgist with American Steel & Wire and eventually founded his own company, Donahue Industries, Inc. He served first as president and treasurer of the company, and then chairman and treasurer until his retirement in 2003. Donahue Industries produced metal and plastic components for the grinding wheel industry, groove gages, metal stamped parts and assemblies, and stamped metal components for the wire brush industry.

Over the years, the Donahues remained active members of the WPI family. Jim served as chair of the Alumni Fund Board; as secretary, treasurer, vice president, and president of the Worcester County Alumni Association; and then as president of the WPI Alumni Association. He also participated in his reunion committees and the Alumni Council. He helped guide the university as a trustee from 1973 to 1993, and as a trustee emeritus from 1993 to 2003. Through his service on the board, Jim touched nearly every aspect of the university, from budget and investment to academic planning and student affairs.

Philanthropy always has been a top priority for the Donahues, and they have touched many lives through their gifts to Worcester-area organizations. WPI has been fortunate to be the beneficiary of their generosity on many occasions. Their first gift to the university, Barbara explains, was the Irving James Donahue Jr. Scholarship Fund, established in 1976.

“Jim went to WPI on a four-year scholarship from American Steel & Wire,” Barbara says. “He knew the value of scholarship support.” She continues the tradition of having dinner each year with the scholarship recipients and telling them about the man behind the fund. “I don’t want them to feel that this is just a fund. Someone worked for this, someone shared this with them,” she says. “And they may be inspired to do the same. Jim always told the students, ‘The only thing I want you to do is help someone else through the way someone helped you.’”

In addition to their scholarship fund, the Donahues have donated crew shells to WPI and funded an erg room and crew offices at the university. Barbara is certain that Jim would be happy about her decision to fund the rowing tank in the new sports and recreation center. Crew, she believes—and Jim also believed—can change lives.

“In high school, students learn rowing and by the time they’re seniors, they love it. They look for colleges and universities that have rowing, and the colleges look for experienced rowers. This opens a lot of doors for young people,” Barbara says. “It betters their lives.”

With the help of alumni, students, parents, and friends, the Sports and Recreation Center will stand as a testament to WPI’s commitment to excellence in the education of the whole person. It will inspire generations of WPI students, as Alumni Gym once did, with the knowledge that the university family believed in them and invested in their potential.

We invite you to invest in the lives of today’s WPI students and the generations who will follow them in the decades to come.

Please join us in building the Sports and Recreation Center at WPI.

Few colleges or universities can make the claims that WPI can make: We have a tremendously strong academic program anchored in science and technology; students can come to us and be prepared to make a real impact in the world in just the ways American industry needs most. At the same time, we have a beautiful campus with marvelous facilities that support the development of the whole individual in facets artistic, humanistic, academic, athletic, and practical. The Sports and Recreation Center will add another claim to our list. It will make us as well-equipped in athletics as any of the renowned New England liberal arts colleges. Adding the Center will be adding strength to strength. It will vastly improve our ability to support all our students in their athletic and recreational pursuits and by extension in their preparation for life. It is the one thing students mention every time I ask them what more I can do for WPI.
Dr. Dennis D. Berkey, president

There are many opportunities to suppport this important project. To discuss your options, contact Jo-Ann Alessandrini, associate vice president for development and campaign director, at alessandrini@wpi.edu or 508-831-6676.

What will this wonderful new facility look like? The centerpiece will boast a four-court 29,000-square foot gymnasium, ringed by a three-lane jogging track, for recreation, athletics, and special events. An 11,000-square foot fitness center will be devoted to cardio fitness and free weight training areas, as well as a separate circuit area for physical education classes. Specialized spaces, such as three convertible racquetball and squash courts and an eight-person rowing tank, along with multipurpose rooms, will occupy nearly 5,000 additional square feet.

The natatorium will feature a 25-meter competition swimming pool, varying in depth from 4 to 14 feet to accommodate a variety of aquatic activities, as well as seating for 250 spectators. The community will enjoy well-equipped locker rooms on several floors, informal lounge spaces, and a training and rehabilitation suite, featuring two hydrotherapy tanks, at field level. Athletes and spectators alike will find public restrooms accessible from the playing fields.

As important as the individual features, the building design will reflect the symbolic and practical importance of the Center as a unifying force for the WPI community. Notably, a 25-foot wide multi-level atrium will offer striking views of the west campus and the Bancroft Hills beyond. A glass-covered passageway will connect Harrington Auditorium with the new Center and link the pedestrian path from the west campus to the Quadrangle, providing handicapped access and expediting circulation around the center.

The new structure will provide a fourth face to the Quad, completing it on the west side with a handsome two-story brick and glass façade. From the west, it will present a highly visible and distinctive five-story elevation, providing a new WPI landmark along Park Avenue.

Two collateral changes will provide a beautiful domino effect. The first is the removal of the structure connecting Alumni Gym to Harrington, which will open access and views from the Quad to the Higgins House gardens behind the Campus Center. An interior renovation of Alumni Gym will bring new life to this venerable structure, converting it to academic use.

In later phases of the project, a parking garage for 500 vehicles will be constructed under a new turf field, eliminating the need for parking areas in the center of campus. The Quad, planted with grass and trees and bordered by pedestrian paths, will provide a natural crossroads and gathering place for the community.

For my teammates and me in women’s rugby, and for many other students in club sports like ours, the fields and indoor spaces in the new Center will make a huge difference. We belong to the New England Rugby Football Union, and in 2006 we made it to the national championship. Like all club teams, we compete for practice and playing times. In winter we can usually get in one or two indoor practices a week, at non-peak times, like 7 am. Otherwise, we practice off campus, at a local elementary school, three or four times a week.

We use the WPI softball and baseball fields for home games, so we were never able to have a spring game at home until this year. We got to practice on the new turf field once or twice a week in the spring and actually hosted our first home game. We won it 32-1. We’re hoping to have more experiences like that when the new Center gives us access to more space for games and practices.
Paige Bourne ’10

The Sports and Recreation Center has been designed with flexibility in mind. Its spaces will include the infrastructure to support many types of events and programming, from athletic contests to large-scale career fairs and campus celebrations. Among the many exciting options for the new and renovated auditoriums is their use as the site of robotics competitions.

The first university to offer a robotics undergraduate major, WPI supports an array of competitions for amateur roboticists, including the global program FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), created in 1989 by WPI alumnus Dean Kamen ’73, which provides high school students an opportunity to compete with one another in designing and building robots and achieving a novel function. Only the limits of current facilities have prevented WPI’s student and faculty roboticists from doing even more. With the space and advanced capabilities of the new Sports and Recreation Center, the university will have the ability to host a variety of exciting events, including the regional FIRST competitions for the first time.