The University of Hawaii at Hilo will soon have a new selling point for student athletes.

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The University of Hawaii at Hilo will soon have a new selling point for student athletes.

An $11.6 million renovation for athletics facilities on the campus — including locker rooms, training, sports medicine and weight rooms and offices — is expected to begin early next year.

If all goes well, the facilities should be completed and ready for use by fall 2027, according to UH Hilo Athletics Director Pat Guillen. It will be the first major work done to the athletics building in nearly 50 years, and will include the addition of some new features.

“The existing building was built in 1979, and it hasn’t undergone any type of renovation since then, so it’s long overdue,” Guillen told the Tribune-Herald. “We’ll also have, as part of it, a classroom and a conference room, a meeting room. It’ll be a hybrid, so to speak, where teams can watch film and also where students can do some study hall work and things like that, and then some storage facilities. So, it’s basically a remodel, it’s not new construction.”

He said there has been excitement among students about the changes.

“I don’t think I go a day without somebody asking me, ‘Hey, Pat, when’s the construction going to start? It’s pretty awesome,” Guillen said.

He thinks the renovations will benefit not just the over 200 student athletes at the university, but also the larger student population.

“It’s all part of the overall student experience,” he said. “I’m a firm believer our students — whether they’re local students or international students or students from the mainland — all of our students, they’re deserving of a first-class student experience, and facilities is a big part of that.”

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In addition to better serving current students, he hopes the renovation also serves as a draw for potential recruits.

“I think, specifically for our student athletes, in this day and age, kids look for the new shiny things, and you know, if you got them on a recruiting visit and you’re showing them a weight room that was built in 1979 using equipment that’s older than probably their parents, that’s not much of a recruiting lure,” he said.

The project is part of scheduled campus “renewal and improvement” work, according to UH Hilo Vice Chancellor for Administrative Affairs Kalei Rapoza.

He said in a statement to the Tribune-Herald that this also includes efforts to modernize campus buildings and transition to more sustainable infrastructure, such as upgrading ventilation and air-conditioning equipment and controls for energy efficiency and air quality and repairing and installing new LED light fixtures.

In addition to the athletics facilities, the Mookini Library on campus will also be getting an upgraded asystem this year. An $8.77 million contract for the work was recently awarded.

“Many of our mechanical systems and student facilities have served the campus well for decades but are reaching the end of their operational lifespans,” Rapoza wrote. “By addressing critical … mechanical systems now, we prevent emergency failures which are costly to fix and lead to interruptions in operations that impact our students and employees.”

He added that it is also an important way to help preserve the library’s collections, which include the Edith Kanaka‘ole Hawaiian Collection.

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The money for this work comes from state capital improvement funds.

Email Grace Inez Adams at [email protected].