YSU athletic center zips to fast lane

By Harold Gwin

The $10 million indoor-training facility is slated to open next year.

YOUNGSTOWN — An indoor athletic-training facility proposed for the north side of the Youngstown State University campus could be open for student use by August 2010.

The finance and facilities committee of the YSU Board of Trustees has named MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown as the architect for the $10 million project.

The university got a total of 15 architectural proposals for the job, and a review team narrowed that down to three finalists — MS Consultants, MSA Sport (a division of MSA Architects of Cincinnati) and Richard Fleischman & Partners of Cleveland, said John Hyden, YSU executive director of facilities.

Those three recently made formal presentations to the board committee.

Although several committee members said they were impressed with Fleisch- man’s creative approach to a 120,000-square-foot building that would house a 300-meter track and football practice field, the committee decided to go with MS Consultants because it is a local company that has performed satisfactorily on other YSU projects, including the east stands at Stambaugh Stadium.

Construction on the WATTS (Watson and Tressel Training Site) Center was originally not expected to begin until July 2010 with completion in early 2011, but the job has been fast-tracked at the insistence of some members of the board of trustees who believe it will provide a direct benefit to students and could produce revenue for the university through leases by schools and other colleges.

The latest schedule shows construction stating in March 2010 with completion in August 2010.

The center is named for former YSU head football coach Jim Tressel and his wife, Ellen, and her parents, Frank and Norma Watson, who pledged a total of $1 million to get the project started in mid-2007.

The financing plan calls for half of the $10 million cost to be financed through philanthropy with the other half coming from money the university plans to borrow through the sale of bonds in early 2010 to finance this and other projects.

As of this point, only $3 million of the $5 million in private funds has been raised.

Trustee Harry Meshel has said that shortage may not be an issue when it comes time to seek bids for the construction.

He pointed out that bids on the new Williamson College of Business Administration now being built came in $4 million below the construction estimate of $34 million, an indication that contractors were hungry for work. The WATTS project could also be a beneficiary of that phenomenon, he said.

Plus, it’s easier to raise money when people can see the work in progress, Meshel said.

The selected site is currently occupied by an outdoor track just east of Elm Street and south of the Madison Avenue Expressway.

gwin@vindy.com