A key element of Antioch College’s effort to maximize the impact of all its assets is its 44,000-square-foot Wellness Center, which reopened in 2014 after an $8.5-million renovation. It now has a modern interior, a new six-lane swimming pool, and new furniture and workout equipment.
Membership is open to anyone at a base price of $40 a month. For Yellow Springs, Ohio, which has no other public gym, the Wellness Center quickly became an important amenity.
Monica Hasek, the director, says it now has just under 2,000 members, including Antioch students, and finished its most recent fiscal year 5 percent over revenue projections.
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But income isn’t the facility’s only contribution to the college. “The Wellness Center was really slated to be the bridge between Yellow Springs and Antioch College and to bring energy to the campus,” says Ms. Hasek.
Antioch is small to begin with, and in any given semester a quarter of its students are away on internships as part of its cooperative-education program. So the influx of community members coming to attend yoga classes, swim, or use the weight machines is welcome. A lot of retirees are members, Ms. Hasek adds. “They spend two or three hours a day here. For community members, the Wellness Center is really the face of the college.”
Antioch is by no means the only college to open its recreation facilities to local residents. But many institutions see offering them memberships “as a public service, as good community relations, not as a moneymaker,” says Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges.
The University of Iowa, for instance, offers $70-a-month community memberships that provide access to 10 facilities, including not only a gym complex but also a tennis center, a boathouse, and a 485-acre outdoor recreation area. Alma College, Brown University, Evergreen State University, Oberlin College, and the University of Richmond are among others welcoming community members to their recreation centers.
And Wartburg College, in Waverly, Iowa, has a 200,000-square-foot facility that opened during the 2007-8 academic year. Although the City of Waverly contributed to the facility’s operating costs for the first eight years and guaranteed a minimum amount of community revenue, income from memberships — the base price is $50 a month — has never come close to matching projections, the college says.
Nonetheless, Wartburg officials defend their decision to build the facility, saying it would have been 140,000 square feet if it had been intended to meet only the college’s needs. The additional space added to accommodate local uses, they say, “is not only paying for itself but is bringing in millions to help pay for the rest of the facility.”
Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.
