Students mixed on Gimbel expansion

You can't please all of the people all of the time. This rings true for the University, as its plans for the $23 million Pottruck Health and Fitness Center were met with mixed reaction from students and community members who frequent Gimbel Gymnasium. Upon its projected completion in 2003, the Pottruck Center will be connected to Gimbel, and its construction will necessitate closing the gym this summer. The plans for the new building, which were unveiled by the Penn officials last Thursday, also call for relocating Gimbel's Katz Fitness Center to the first basketball court on the second floor. Those who seemed least happy with the prospect of a closed Gimbel Gymnasium were the students and community members who play basketball on the crowded second floor courts. "I was just really, really upset," said John Dundon, a College and Engineering junior who had planned to stay in Philadelphia this summer and use the courts and the workout facilities at Gimbel. "They just sprang it on us at the last minute. We had no idea it was coming. Now it's April, and it's going to close in May, in one month. It really pissed me off." Dundon said he was also concerned that alternative facilities -- such as basketball courts at Hutchinson Gymnasium and on the roof of the parking garage on 38th and Spruce -- will be inadequate to meet his needs, a fear that some echoed. Director of Athletic Communications Carla Shultzberg said that the Athletic Department tried to satisfy as many people as possible. "Every time you do this, you try to make everybody, as many people as possible, happy with the situation," she said. "And sometimes, you can't please all the people." Another concern that many expressed was the scarcity of places on campus to play and the inevitable squeeze that will result when Gimbel reopens in September with only two usable courts. When space permits, the fitness equipment from the Katz Center will eventually be moved into the new Pottruck Center, restoring the number of basketball courts in Gimbel to three, Shultzberg said. Even so, the temporary loss of one court will make a situation already seen by many as inconvenient more difficult. "I feel it's pretty crowded already here," said Ian Sneed, a 1993 Penn graduate and a Gimbel patron. "I definitely think that's not a good move to take away one of the three courts. Especially [considering that] on Friday afternoons, you wait 45 minutes to an hour to play a game." Sneed, who said he would not have used Gimbel during the summer even if it weren't being closed, also felt that the quality of play in pickup games at Gimbel is not usually matched at alternative facilities. Not all ballers, however, were upset at the plans to close their second home. One patron seemed largely indifferent to the temporary loss of Gimbel hoops. "In the summertime, there's always going to be a place to play ball," said Shawn Robinson, a 25-year old data entry technician who just received his membership to Gimbel. The plans to close Gimbel this summer and to ultimately complete the Pottruck Center seemed to be welcomed outside the confines of the second floor basketball courts. "It's fabulous," Lauren Leiman, a College senior, said of the Pottruck plans. "I think a lot of other colleges, a lot of Ivy League schools that I've been to, have fabulous facilities. "It's really bad that we only have one [facility] that's so small that you have to wait an hour and a half to get on the machine."

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