The Roche Sports Complex arena and fitness center were closed Monday due to water
damages done to the facility by an unknown person. A scheduled closure occurred over spring break, but continued into Monday in order to complete the repairs.
Monday’s closure was caused by an unknown individual walking on the gray and black poured floor product before it set during the scheduled springbreak closure. The same problem has occurred before. At some point after the initial pouring of the floors in the renovation of the arena, while the complex was closed, someone left footprints passing in front of the fitness center. According to Chief Administrative Officer Rich Péwé, the work over spring break was to finish
the first phase of the arena renovations, which included pouring the rest of the rubber sports floor, and to repair the damages already done to the facility.
“When you see at basketball games that it looks like it wasn’t quite finished, that’s because it wasn’t,” he said.
In addition to the footprints, the main court was damaged by water from a ceiling drip. The snowmelt damaged a 10 foot by 10 foot section of the court. It was sanded down and refinished at the time, but Péwé and the administration used the weeklong closure to tear out the damaged flooring and replace it.
“We planned to get this done over spring break so that we didn’t have to close down while students were here,” Péwé said.
However, before the newlypoured flooring set, four footprints were left near the entrance of the arena. Péwé decided to delay the facilities reopening till Tuesday and fix the flooring immediately. The extra floor material required to fix the damage done by the footsteps cost $8,000. The
college could only collect $2,000 from its builder’s risk insurance policy.
“We didn’t do too well on the claim,” Péwé said. “The court fix was about $7,000 because they had to integrate into the floor again, refinish it, and repaint. So, not good.”
The end of repairs and the finished flooring signals the completion of the first stage of the arena renovations.
“We’ll have phase two mostly done by the time students get back next year,” Péwé said.
Phase two will see the addition of three locker rooms beneath a mezzanine containing three coach’s offices. Above the fitness center will be three dance and aerobics rooms, a classroom, spin cycles, and a mezzanine. A climbing wall will also be put in the corner of the fitness center. Brad Kocher, director of recreational sports, said that with varsity practices, club sports, IM sports, and pickup activities, the facility is wellused and kept extremely busy, thus the need to find times when students are absent to make progress in the renovations.
Speaking of phase two, he said, “It’s going to kind of begin in small increments soon — the major operations will be done over the summer.”
Kocher said he didn’t know if further closings are possible.
“If it’s safe for people to be in here, then it will be open,” he said. “I just encourage people to continue to use the facility. It’s beautiful.”
