For half a century, Southwestern College’s dirt lot at the corner of H Street and Otay Lakes Road was a pumpkin patch and a Christmas tree farm.
Outside of the holiday season, the lot sat isolated and vacant for majority of the year.
But the empty lot won’t be vacant any more as the college will celebrate the grand opening of a $52 million Wellness and Aquatics Complex on Jan. 31 that will be available to students, student-athletes and the general public with a paid membership.
“It’s an opportunity for our students, it’s an opportunity for our campus community and our community at large,” said Jim Spillers, dean of wellness, exercise science and athletics at SWC. “I’ve overused the cliché but if you build it they will come that’s what this (facility) does. This is the bricks and mortar that aids recruiting and the college’s future students.”
The state-of-the art 75,000 square-foot, three-floor facility features a gymnasium, two-Olympic-sized swimming pools, a 25-meter therapy pool, fitness labs, exercise rooms and classrooms.
Outside of the building are Maya-inspired glyphs that were designed by a SWC art professor. The three glyphs mean “first,” “health” and “pool” in Maya.
The facility is already open to athletic teams and exercise classes begin Jan. 29, the start of the Spring semester. Residents can soon buy memberships to use the facility once the operator EXOS comes up with a pricing plan.
“We’re going to get our students using the building first, then we will move into the membership phase,” Spillers said.
Spillers anticipates that memberships will start sometime in April.
The complex was made possible by a 2008 voter-approved $389 million general obligation bond measure known as Prop. R. The Wellness and Aquatics Center is the latest in a string of developments with Prop. R funding. The center is adjacent to Fieldhouse Classroom and DeVore Stadium, which were also funded by Prop. R and were fully constructed three years ago.
SWC Student Alex Gonzalez,29, recently took a tour with a few classmates and said he can’t wait to have the Wellness and Aquatics Center officially open.
“We were able to do a tour of the whole building, mostly because everything is still under construction. They are still buildings things but we could tell right now it’s going to be a great facility,” he said. “As soon as the main campus finds out that this is done and classes are ready to go I don’t see this facility ever being empty.”
The Facility will be empty from now until April 2nd “due to some unforeseen facilities circumstances.”