Nellis set to recieve new fitness center Published June 15, 2009 By Airman 1st Class Michael Charles 99th Air Base Wing Public Affairs Office NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. -- Plans for a new $25 million fitness center were finalized in a meeting with base leadership June 8. Col. Dave Belote, 99th Air Base Wing commander, approved the plans for the new fitness center after reviewing the architecture and site plans of more than 5 different proposals. "The Airmen at Nellis are some of the hardest working in the Air Force," said Colonel Belote. "They deserve to be able to exercise in a facility that exemplifies the best the Air Force can give them." Doug Walton, a WPH Architecture principal research assistant, said that as architects, his team wanted to expose how this facility can strengthen the fit to fight mentality. Currently, the fitness center is 80,000 square feet short of the maximum allotted gym space for an installation the size of Nellis. The new two-story 109,000 square foot design will use the added space to give much needed improvement to the overall layout of the gym. Some of the improvements will include three basketball gyms, an indoor pool, an indoor track and a free weight room three times the size of the current gym's weight room. For a complete list of new additions to the gym click here. Initially, the new fitness center was to be built in a phase program around the old gym. However, after reviewing the cost estimate for the plan, it was decided that the base would be more cost-effective if it chose an empty site and built the new gym from the bottom up. The current Freedom Park area and the older homes near Lomie Heard Elementary School along Chambers Road will be demolished to make room for the new facility, which is tentatively named the New Freedom Park. Construction of the new fitness center is made possible due to money received from the lease agreement between the City of North Las Vegas and the Air Force. In this agreement, Nellis leased a 41-acre parcel of land for a new water reclamation plant. In turn, the city paid the Air Force $25 Million which will be used to construct a new state-of-the art fitness center. "I think it's going to be a great benefit to the Nellis community and for the people that use the gym," said Joseph DiRosario, the Deputy for installation support at Nellis. "We are aiming to have a bigger and more modern gym." Construction is slated to begin in March 2010 and is planned to be completed in early 2011.
