Career Tech CentersSouthwest OhioCincinnati

Great Oaks Exercise Lab Renovation

The Exercise Science program at Laurel Oaks Career Campus in Wilmington was teaching in a suite that still carried the plumbing of what the space used to be: a tile shower and pan, a tub in the restroom, a mop sink, three stainless sinks and a wall of lockers, none of it arranged for a lab where students take measurements on each other and on equipment.

Great Oaks renovated the classroom and lab suite and built an outdoor exercise area alongside it, on a pre-bid TOP-C unit price contract. Inside, demolition took out casework, ceiling pads, carpet and VCT, the lockers and the wet fixtures. Two masonry openings were shored and cut for new anodized aluminum storefront systems with insulated glazing, carried on steel lintels and finished with new block. The slab was cut and replaced for in-floor plumbing serving two sinks, a washer and a drinking fountain with bottle filler. The floor is now epoxy in the wet area, restroom, changing, locker and storage spaces, carpet in the classroom, and half-inch black rubber in the lab. Twenty-five double-tier vented lockers give the program 50 openings. Sprinkler heads were respaced to the new wall layout and the fire alarm pull stations and strobes updated to match it.

Outside, an 1,800-square-foot concrete slab and 675 square feet of synthetic turf sit behind a 65-foot concrete curb, with an adjustable-height basketball hoop on a 72-inch polycarbonate backboard, 200 feet of six-foot black steel fence, and a single gate with an automatic closer and a panic bar. The slab is sloped about one percent away from the building, and the disturbed ground was regraded and hydroseeded.

Exercise science classroom lab with treatment table and skeleton model at Great Oaks

Stability ball rack and cardio equipment in the Great Oaks fitness lab

Treadmills and selectorized machines along the Great Oaks fitness floor

Wide view of the Great Oaks exercise science fitness floor

Racks and benches beside the glass wall in the Great Oaks lab

Squat racks and plate trees along the Great Oaks fitness wall

Lab casework with sinks and an anatomical model at Great Oaks

Machines, racks and plyo boxes on the Great Oaks fitness floor

Stability balls, mats and plyo boxes stored beside the lab casework

Classroom seating and whiteboard in the Great Oaks exercise science suite

Corridor lockers outside the Great Oaks exercise science lab

Technical Discussion

An exercise lab that continues outdoors

The straightforward way to buy this is a renovated lab and, separately, a pad out back. Priced that way it behaves like two projects: the room gets used daily, and the slab gets used when somebody has time to walk a class outside and back.

The decision here was to design the two as one teaching environment, and the item that makes it work is the pair of storefront systems. Cutting two new openings in a masonry wall — shoring, steel lintels, block infill, insulated glazing — is the most expensive architectural move in the scope, and what it buys is sightlines. One instructor standing in the lab can see the outdoor area. That is the difference between an outdoor space that is a field trip and one that is part of the room: supervision does not have to be split, and a class can move across without regrouping.

The enclosure does the rest. Two hundred feet of six-foot fence and a single 42-inch gate with an automatic closer and a panic bar gives the area one controlled way in and out, latched by default and exitable in an emergency without a key. Without it, an outdoor lab is a supervision problem, and those get used twice a year.

The surfaces continue rather than match. Inside, the lab is half-inch rubber and the wet areas are epoxy; outside, 675 square feet of turf sits between the curb and 1,800 square feet of broom-finished concrete, both on four inches of compacted stone. The program gets the same pair of surfaces on either side of the glass: something compliant for floor work, something hard for equipment and court work.

What has to be right for the building's sake is water. The subgrade was graded for positive drainage before the stone went down, and the slab slopes roughly one percent away from the wall. A new slab poured against an exterior wall is a common way to ruin a renovated interior floor, and the epoxy and rubber inside are the finishes that would show it first.

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