Officials at the University of Vermont are celebrating a milestone in their efforts to upgrade athletic facilities at the college in Burlington.
A ceremonial groundbreaking was held in front of the Gutterson Fieldhouse to mark the imminent construction of the new Multi-Purpose Center. Built in 1963, the Patrick Gym and Gutterson Fieldhouse complex has been the college’s athletic focal point. A long-planned Multi-Purpose Center will upgrade and create separate hockey and basketball facilities as well as expand academic, social, cultural and health and wellness programs.
UVM Director of Athletics Jeff Schulman says the college has been considering major upgrades for years. “There’s several components to it. The first is a major upgrade of recreation and wellness space, a five-fold increase in the amount of dedicated non-varsity space. The second piece is a new event center that will be home to our men’s and women’s basketball programs but also capable of hosting concerts and lectures and academic programs and other campus wide activities. And then the final piece is a major renovation of Gutterson Fieldhouse which has been the home of UVM hockey since the early ‘60’s and it’s kind of an iconic college hockey facility. That’s the multi-purpose project.”
Schulman says the project will benefit more than the college’s 18 varsity sports teams. “We have such incredible fans and support and they deserve better frankly. You’ve got great energy in Patrick and Gutterson but you know they’re not modern facilities and that’s been one of the primary goals is really to modernize our athletic physical plant to benefit our student athletes, the student body as a whole and our fans in the community.”
The college Board of Trustees set a $30 million fundraising goal for the $95 million project before it would allow construction to begin. UVM Foundation President and CEO Shane Jacobson explains that a $4 million gift announced over the weekend from 1972 graduate Chuck Davis and his wife Marna brought the fundraising total to about $33 million. The Board has now allowed construction to begin. “We were able to work with people like Rich and Deb Tarrant who we announced a gift a few months ago of $15 million. And then Chuck and Marna which allowed us to cross the $30 million mark which is the number that the Board had set as a threshold that needed to be crossed so that they had the confidence that the donor community was there to secure the rest of the necessary funding.”
Jacobson says the Multi-Purpose Center project is among a number of goals targeted under a $500 million, eight-year fundraising campaign. He says after nearly three decades of talk about upgrading the sports facilities donors realized the college was serious about completing the project. “It is partly about UVM athletics but it is a project for every single UVM student. A huge footprint of this project is expanding the space for student health, student recreation, student wellness. The fact that the project itself for our donors was actually an investment in every single student really stood out as something different.”
The Multi-Purpose Center’s Recreation and Wellness Center will be named after Chuck Davis’ mother, a 1945 UVM graduate. The new Tarrant Center, named after donors Rich and Deb Tarrant, will house the college’s basketball programs.
The Multi-Purpose Center is the second largest facilities effort currently being undertaken by UVM. A new $105 million STEM education-research complex is scheduled to be completed this summer.
