News

Unipol Recreation Centre will reopen in the new location of the University Plaza Building on January 23 next year.

The move to the new facility has been a long time coming and will provide students and paying members of the public with new and improved recreational facilities.
 
The current Unipol Building will close at 11pm on December 19 and the process of transferring equipment will take place over the Christmas break.
 
Critic can confirm that rumours stating students would have to pay to use Unipol’s facilities under a VSM environment are untrue. Membership will still be free next year (as this is covered by the recreational levy paid to the University) and both staff and public membership costs are likely to be similar to this year. Opening hours will remain the same (6am-11pm weekdays, 8am-9pm Saturdays and 9am-11pm Sundays).
 
The new building will have three floors. Upon entry to the ground floor, visitors will be greeted by reception. Much like in the current Unipol, this will be the ‘go to’ for visitors wishing to sign up for courses and trips, recreational sport leagues, personalised programmes and aerobics programmes, as well as being the place to hire gear. The ground floor will also house the Plaza Café, which will be open most of the year until 8pm at night.
 
Once past reception, there will be three areas on the ground floor; a cardio and light-weights area, a weight machine/stretching area, and a free weight area.
 
Up on the first floor, there will be two men’s and two women’s changing rooms, meaning that one room for each gender will always available when the other is being cleaned. There will also be two large gymnasium areas on this floor. One will have a large curtain to divide the gym in half when aerobics classes are taking place. The other will be mainly for basketball and volleyball. Both gym floors will be ‘sprung loaded’ as well as having advanced temperature control systems to keep those stipples at bay on cold winter mornings.
 
Sitting above the changing rooms on the top floor will be an area known as the MPA (multiple purpose area). This area is intended for badminton, table tennis and other activities that do not require extensive ceiling height.
 
Next year Unipol is expected to see in excess of 500,000 visitors through the doors. All existing equipment is being relocated, as well as some new equipment purchased specifically for the new facility.
 
Over the next few weeks, contractors will be removing some basketball backboards from Unipol to allow placement of these in the new facility before the floors are laid.