Athletic students on TR Campus will experience a whole new environment in the fitness center this upcoming spring semester.

The gym will be closed beginning Nov. 25 and plans to reopen before the upcoming semester begins.

TR fitness center manager and associate instructor Nick Giovannitti said the change has been overdue.

“Right now, our fitness center looks more like a glorified hotel gym rather than a fitness lab,” he said.

Some of the upgrades include changing the carpet to suit different types of training, making the center more accessible to disabled users, relocating the furniture and having more multi-purpose training tools.

“TCC has a high diversity of students to utilize the facility,” Giovannitti said. “We have people from nursing, physical therapy or sports management, military or even the campus police come here for different types of goals. Right now, we are not able to cater to everybody.”

Giovannitti requested to reconstruct the fitness center a year and a half ago and only recently heard from one of the district architecture managers.

“There’s a set protocol of procedure, and I can only give the justification of what I want,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not about the yay or nay, but it’s also about the budget.”

One of the significant changes will see a lecture hall for kinesiology classes by the center’s elevator.

“Currently, the class and the fitness center are very far from each other,” Giovannitti said. “Students lose their money for the time to go between two places.”

Fernanda Walkup, who works in the fitness center, said that she is very excited about the upcoming reconstruction.

“All students will have a good reason to work out here,” she said.

TR student Angie Blanco, who twice worked out at the fitness center, said she did not know about the closing. Nonetheless, she feels delighted after hearing the changes.

“It sounds more sanitary, which is important to me,” she said.

Despite the upcoming changes, Giovannitti still envisions a lot of other details. One of which is to have a basketball court and a swimming pool by the grassy hill to the side of the center.

“I am hoping to mash academic and application and to upgrade our kinesiology project,” he said. “After all, this is all about the students.”