Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter Sched­uled to Open in Jan­u­ary

MISHAWAKA--The highly an­tic­i­pated Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter will need an ex­tra month be­fore it of­fi­cially opens its doors. Orig­i­nally sched­uled to open to the pub­lic in De­cem­ber, the new fa­cil­ity is now on track to open Jan­u­ary 2021. 

The City of Mishawaka could not hold in-per­son meet­ings dur­ing the In­di­ana statewide quar­an­tine. Since they could not hold in-per­son meet­ings, the City Coun­cil did not have the op­por­tu­nity to look at and ap­prove the ar­chi­tec­tural draw­ings of the new fa­cil­ity. 

Since the train­ing fa­cil­ity is be­ing built within the city lim­its, the Mishawaka City Coun­cil is re­quired to ap­prove Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s build­ing plans. 

“Un­til that hap­pened, we could­n’t get ap­proval to start,” Phys­i­cal Plant Di­rec­tor Joe Zap­pia said. “We had the state-ap­proved draw­ings, but the city had­n’t ap­proved the me­chan­i­cals.” 

De­spite the small set­back, Zap­pia and Danny Wilk­er­son, Bethel’s track and field head coach, are both happy with the progress so far. 

From the out­side, stu­dents and fac­ulty can see a shell struc­ture of a build­ing, guarded by a tall, gray fence. Cur­rently, the in­side of the struc­ture fea­tures a few bare walls with wires run­ning through them and some open studs.  

“Right now, the guys are start­ing to rough in the elec­tri­cal, the plumb­ing and the heat­ing,” Zap­pia said. “They’re ac­tu­ally build­ing walls right now.” 

Once the trade com­pa­nies such as Dy­namic Me­chan­i­cal and Gay­lor Elec­tric Elkhart fin­ish rough­ing in, the area will be in­spected. Af­ter in­spec­tions are cleared, the dry wall will be put up and painted. As the paint­ing fin­ishes, the track and field sur­face and car­pets will be put down in their re­spec­tive places. 

As for the equip­ment go­ing into the fa­cil­ity, Wilk­er­son said he is try­ing to raise money for an ad­di­tional Boost anti-grav­ity tread­mill. He is also in the process of se­cur­ing the car­dio and weight room equip­ment. 

“It is still dif­fi­cult to say what [equip­ment] we’re miss­ing, but I feel pretty com­fort­able to say the fa­cil­ity will open up as turnkey as pos­si­ble and we’re pretty ex­cited about that,” Wilk­er­son said. 

In ad­di­tion to se­cur­ing equip­ment, Wilk­er­son is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Zap­pia and on-site work­ers about equip­ment place­ment in the fa­cil­ity. For ex­am­ple, the ground and the box for the pole vaults pits need to be po­si­tioned in a pre­cise way. 

Once the build­ing is com­pleted, the track and field teams and other sports will im­me­di­ately move their prac­tices out of Good­man Gym. 

“As soon as we’re able to get in there and it’s cleared and every­body signs off on it, our goal is to be out of these train­ing fa­cil­i­ties over here in the Wiekamp Cen­ter,” Wilk­er­son said. “And open it up to every­one else as soon as pos­si­ble.” 

The 200-me­ter in­door track in the new fa­cil­ity will be the track and field teams’ first ex­clu­sive prac­tice area in some time. For most of the pro­gram’s his­tory, the teams used neigh­bor­ing high school track fa­cil­i­ties and the two gyms in the Wiekamp Cen­ter for prac­tice. 

In the ath­letic de­part­men­t’s his­tory, team sports like track and field ac­com­mo­dated for the lack of prac­tice space by shar­ing the small fa­cil­ity. The ex­pan­sion of the Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Fa­cil­ity will al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem for many Bethel teams. 

While the fa­cil­i­ty’s fund­ing is ap­proved, in­ter­ested par­ties can still do­nate to­wards the equip­ment needed and the en­tire pro­ject.