Iron will be pumping and Zumba will be jumping when the new Recreation and Wellness Center opens spring 2013.
The center will be offering state-of-the-art amenities and classes provided as a collaboration with campus recreation.
Construction crews are working seven days a week to get the new building completed by late this spring.
"My main responsibility is to get the students excited and informed of what is potentially being built," said Adam Sardinha, assistant director of marketing to campus
recreation. "The students voiced a major concern that they wanted to have a top tier facility. They see their friends at other universities having that. They wanted the same amenities and features that are at other institutions."
The building itself is a LEED certified building based off the United State's Green Building.
LEED stands for leadership, energy and environmental design, and means that the new center will be a sustainable building that decreases Auburn's carbon footprint.
The building also features a number of innovative amenities including a 50-foot rock climbing wall with an auto-belaying system, four bordering caves for lateral climbing, a 20-foot wet rock climbing wall in the 20,000 gallon leisure activity pool, a 45-person hot tub in the shape of a tiger paw and a third of a mile indoor track with a corkscrew formation and 10 feet of altitude change.
"I want to make sure that everybody on campus knows that we have programs that are available that will fit basically everybody whether it's intramural sports, club sports, outdoor recreation, aquatics, group fitness and like the whole spectrum of recreation," Sardinha said. "So that you are not only physically sound, but you are mentally and your well-being in general is just balanced. You have a balance between school, work and life."
The building will also have a five-floor tower devoted to the fitness programs.
The top floor is the mind body studio with windows that open up to a gorgeous view of Auburn, Sardinha said.
The fourth floor is the cycling floor, the third floor is for core training and the bottom two floors will be devoted to large classes and all the dance classes, according to the Pamela Wiggins, assistant director of the campus recreation group fitness program.
A student instructor, Akilah Williams, is teaching cycling classes that is new to Auburn this semester.
Williams said she is excited to move to the fitness tower, so she can teach her classes.
"I'm so ready for it. I just don't know what to expect," Williams said. "I know it is supposed to be bigger and better, but it's just like until it comes you don't know how bigger and how better. I just really want it to be here."
The opening of the Recreation and Wellness Center is getting closer and only time can tell how the faculty, staff and students will react to all the work that has gone into making this facility what it is.
"I find myself at the end of my career at what I feel is the best facility in the nation," Wiggins said.
Wiggins has never seen anything like what the new student act is looking to be.
"It is an amazing plan," Wiggins said. "It is an amazing team of people."
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