Two years ago, a student referendum derailed administrators’ plans to raise student fees for a $20 million East Gym renovation. Now, the Binghamton University committee charged with trying again to coordinate the renovations has produced three detailed plans for a revamped East Gym with a cheaper price tag that students might still have to pay.

The plans would all substantially increase the size of FitSpace, the East Gym’s workout area. They would also include expanded gymnasium space, multipurpose rooms, a revamped pool and an elevated track.

But the designs, which would respectively cost $7.8 million, $13.5 million and $17.5 million, differ on just how much expansion they would include. The most expensive would raise the number of FitSpace workout stations to around 200 and contain four gymnasiums, while the cheapest would add around 160 FitSpace stations and have two gyms.

The plans were released in an April 3 report prepared for the East Gym project team and its steering committee by King & King Architects, which along with Moody Nolan Inc., McFarland-Johnson Inc. and Landscape & Prospect has been consulting on the project since at least March 2006.

But the official unveiling of the plans to the BU community won’t come until the spring semester has nearly ended, when administrators intend to hold a Town Hall-style meeting. A BU spokesman said that a date for the meeting would likely be announced next week, but that it would be set for before finals week.

The spokesman, Ryan Yarosh, wouldn’t give a construction time frame, but he did say that the East Gym redesign was still ‘at the concept stage, still early in the process.’

But the level of detail in the plans ‘ all of which include schematics, cost and square footage projections and comprehensive lists of each plan’s pros and cons ‘ appears to contradict Yarosh’s characterization of the renovation strategy as undeveloped.

And the committees dedicated to studying and organizing the project appear to have met in full at least five times between March and September 2006, once devoting a weekend in August to ‘fully’ develop around a dozen potential designs and budgets ‘ and to feel out strategies aimed at getting the student body to embrace raised recreation fees that would likely be required to fund the renovation.

VOTED DOWN

The idea of adding pizzazz to the 1950s-era East Gym dates back to 2005 and earlier with the ‘East Gym Extreme Makeover’ campaign. To convince students, whom officials must consult according to New York State law before they levy fees other than tuition, Binghamton University officials kicked off a marketing campaign that included a flashy public Web site, a trip to Maryland-area college rec centers with student leaders and matching yellow-and-black water bottles embossed with the East Gym Extreme Makeover logo.

The approximate cost of the ad blitz, then Vice President for Administration Anthony Ferrara said shortly after the ballot item failed a March referendum with 55 percent of students against raising fees, was $5,000.

‘Apparently, it wasn’t enough,’ Ferrara joked last March.

Documents exploring an ‘East Gym Transformation’ from Beardsley Design Associates ‘ among hundreds of pages obtained by Pipe Dream under state open-records laws ‘ reflect a continuing but quiet campaign by Binghamton University officials to build a recreation center lampooned by critics as over-the-top and excessive but touted by supporters as a necessity for a competitive college wooing top-flight students.

The campaign’s cornerstone was creating enough student ‘buzz,’ in the words of one administrator’s handwritten notes, to convince students to let them proceed with the more than $20 million remodeling that would have cost each student about $169 per semester.

Publicly, administration officials were saying early November ‘open forums’ were meant to gather student input about the proposed East Gym ‘Extreme Makeover.’ Indeed, a University contractor did summarize student comments and report them to BU officials, the documents show.

But privately, officials were describing the forums less as a method to gather genuine input than as individual pep rallies focused on ‘selling’ an extreme makeover for which plans were already well underway.

‘Goal: generate ‘buzz,’ a BU official wrote in an unsigned series of notes taken during one of the private planning sessions before the forum.

The writer added on the same page: ‘Not so much an issue of detail info vs. establishing support for the rec. center itself.’

RUSH TO THE FINISH?

Yarosh said that attendees at the upcoming Town Hall would have the chance to ‘give feedback and answer questions,’ although how that would happen ‘ or what effect any feedback might have, given the progress already made in whittling down potential designs ‘ was unclear.

‘We’re still putting together the program,’ Yarosh said.

But at least one student leader thought the ‘program’ could use some tweaking.

‘While I applaud the administration’s efforts to gather student opinion, I think it is irresponsible of them to be going about this so late in the semester when there will be no opportunity for follow up to any of the information they get,’ Student Association Executive Vice President Dave Belsky wrote in an e-mail yesterday. ‘President DeFleur has put all of these projects on fast-track ‘ which is great for the development of our campus and the accelerated accomplishment of goals such as those outlined in the University’s strategic plan.

‘However, I think she should take a second look at that philosophy if such fast-tracking leaves students out of the loop,’ said Belsky, who along with SA President Michael Schiffman sits on the East Gym committee. Belsky provided Pipe Dream with the most recent rec center plans.

If there is in fact a push to fast-track the rec center renovations, it’s not a new one. The minutes of the first East Gym committee meeting contain a section of ‘Lessons Learned’ from the first unsuccessful bid at getting student approval for the renovations.

The first lesson: ‘Timing ‘ rushed through the process.’