Renovations under way for new offices

Thousands of Penn students walk by Franklin Field's J. William White Training House every week, but few know anything about the purpose of the building -- or what goes on inside of it. Athletic Department administrators hope a recent $1.5 million donation will make the underused training house a more valuable and recognizable part of department's facilities. The gift will be used to transform the building --Ecurrently a Dining Services facility which caters primarily to athletes after evening practices -- into $3 million of centralized office space for most of Penn's sports teams. The facility will be renamed as the James Dunning Jr. Coaches Center, in honor of Dunning, a 1970 Wharton graduate who donated the money last semester. His gift is one of the largest individual gifts in Athletic Department history. Athletic Director Steve Bilsky said the department has long needed to renovate its coaches' offices. "Our coaches are in many, many buildings, and many of the offices which they are in are makeshift operations -- store rooms, closets -- it's really not conducive to productive coaching," he said, adding that improving coaching offices has been one of his top priorities since coming to Penn. And the department's major gifts director, Audry Schnur, noted that "we want to create the best office space for our coaches to help them lead professional lives." Although no firm date has been set, the Coaches Center is expected to open during the 1998-99 academic year. "If we get it done by the fall, then that would be ideal to let coaches move in over the summer, but there's nothing that says it has to be done at a certain time," Bilsky said. The entire project is expected to cost $3 million, and the Athletic Department currently has $2 million in guaranteed donations, he said. Dunning's lead gift of $1.5 million will help pay for both exterior and interior renovations to the training house, originally constructed in 1906. The exterior work of cleaning and treating the brick structure has already been completed. The interior work on the building has not started, however, because the design plans have not yet been finalized and the department has not finished raising the necessary funding. The Athletic Department hopes for the coaches of most University's sports teams to have their own office space, with larger programs such as men's and women's basketball to have a suite of offices. Football offices will remain in Weightman Hall. Donors can direct their gifts to specific programs, and the coaching suites will be named in their honor. "We still have several naming opportunities available," Bilsky said. "We have about five or six [suites already donated], and we need 12, so we're about halfway there." Penn men's crew coach Stan Bergman said he was excited about the new center. "We're in Weightman Hall right now, and when we get recruits in, you can't even talk to them because it's so hectic," he said. "It'll be great to have the men's and women's offices together in a more spread-out area." Bergman added a Penn crew alumnus recently offered to donate the $150,000 necessary to build a new suite of offices for the program program's suite of new offices. Since the center's final design plans have not been completed, the Athletic Department has not decided whether it will contain a dining facility. Bilsky said the presence of such a facility will depend on Dining Services' decisions about changes to their department.

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