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The gym, a Beaufort County Parks and Leisure Services facility, has a new rubber floor to replace the old, warped one, new windows and restrooms, a new concessions area, a lot of fresh paint and more.
Renovations, which were performed by Construction Associates Group, Inc., of Bluffton, got under way last spring at the end of the basketball season and cost about $428,000.
"It's like night and day," Rick Simons said as he sat on the new bleachers watching his son, Austin, practice. "I don't know what it cost, but I'm sure they got their money's worth."
Rodney Mayers, who was leading Simons' team through practice Tuesday, said the warped rubber floor had made coaching difficult in the past.
"It's so nice to come in here," Mayers said. "It (had been) like playing on a kitchen floor."
"The gym looked like an old worn-out facility that had gotten no attention for 20-plus years," said Beaufort County Council Chairman Weston Newton, who represents Bluffton.
The county took over the 15,200-square-foot gym and the surrounding campus in 1988. The facilities, at 61 Ulmer Road, were built in 1971 for the May River Academy, which eventually merged with Sea Pines Academy to become Hilton Head Preparatory School.
"The floor, despite its warping, was the best thing that existed about the building," Newton said, calling the old gym "an embarrassment."
Newton and other council members approved the upgrades using capital improvement project money. They also OK'd spending $215,600 to put a new roof on the adjacent recreation center building and to make other improvements there and around the campus.
In 2006, the council spent $106,000 to replace the gym's leaky roof after county engineers determined water damage caused the old floor's warping. Leaking had been so bad, according to county spokeswoman Suzanne Larson, that indoor games sometimes were rained out.
