Regents OK UCI Recreation Center

The University of California Board of Regents on Friday approved a new student recreation center for UC Irvine that critics said would ruin the last rural corner of the campus but administrators and students demanded as a crucial need.

The regents’ unanimous vote brought to a close a debate that emerged in recent months over how best to use the 1,500-acre open space to cope with skyrocketing enrollment, which has made UCI the fastest-growing UC campus.

In a referendum last spring, students overwhelming approved an $88-per-quarter assessment to pay for the $25.8-million building on a rustic patch in the east campus area off California Avenue. It will include a 25-meter swimming pool, basketball and racquetball courts, a weight room and space for aerobics and dance programs.

Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening told the regents that the 91,760-square-foot building will form the “central park” of a planned student residential complex to help accommodate a projected 25% increase in enrollment in the next decade.

Students have long complained that the current recreation center in Crawford Hall on Bridge Road is overcrowded and outmoded.

“A lot of students feel the current rec center really doesn’t serve [our] needs,” said Louis Cheng, a student government officer who addressed the regents.

But plans for the recreation center, for which construction may begin next year, have drawn complaints from supporters of a local 4-H Club and Wilderness Horse Owners Assn., which tend animals at the site. For nearly 30 years, both have used the land on which the recreation center will be built, and both must leave by the middle of next year.

Officials at the private Farm School, an innovative 52-pupil elementary school run under the auspices of UCI’s School of Social Sciences and next to the site for the recreation center, also have said they were worried that construction would ruin the rustic ambience integral to the school’s spirit. The school is not included in long-range plans and, according to a regents’ report, “the recreation center would ultimately displace the Farm School.”

Christine Lofgren, an advisor and lecturer in UCI’s psychology department whose son attends the school, said she is disappointed with the decision but hopes parents and school officials can work with the university to find another site.

“We need to move forward and plan for the eventuality the Farm School will be displaced,” she said.