Vacant for more than a year, Bethlehem's 24-7 Fitness
Club could see new life in the next few weeks.
Moravian College of Bethlehem and St. Luke’s University
Health Network are collaborating with J.G. Petrucci Co. Inc. of Bethlehem and
Asbury, N.J., as the design builder for a project that would transform the
shuttered Schoenersville Road facility into an athletic training center. The
center would include academic programs, sports medicine and physical therapy.
Moravian announced that Petrucci chose Cerminara
Architect of Hillsborough, N.J., to work with it on the design of the building
and the programming of interior spaces.
The college owns the building, and St. Luke’s will lease
some of the space.
Moravian is moving forward with demolition permits and
shortly could start demolition, said John Hauth, senior director of sports medicine
relationships for St. Luke’s University Health Network.
“At the moment, we want to get construction started as
soon as possible,” said Mark Reed, vice president for finance and
administration for Moravian College. “The site improvement plans are in the
hands of the city.”
Construction should start in about 30 days, said Martin
Till, regional president of J.G. Petrucci.
“It’s an innovative reuse of the space,” Till said. “We
are doing everything from start to finish.”
Reed said Moravian’s goals are to complete the
10,000-square-foot space for St. Luke’s by December.
Hauth said St. Luke’s is planning to open the facility by
January.
“We’re confident we’ll stay on target,” he said. “This
has been an outstanding team effort; there is a lot that goes into a project
like this. We are really looking at it as a tremendous partnership and an
opportunity to showcase our national reputation.”
St. Luke’s will have about 25 employees at the site,
including physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons and radiologists, Hauth
said.
The 10,000 square feet for St. Luke’s will be to offer
primary care sports medicine and physical therapy services at the south end of
the first floor, site of the existing showers, locker rooms and saunas.
Overall, the building is 26,200 square feet, which will
be expanded to 44,600 square feet after construction.
Moravian will add a new entry on the east side of the
building for the use of St. Luke’s patients seeking physical therapy, checkups
and other services.
Plans call for extending the existing mezzanine to create
a new second floor, turning the eight floor-to-ceiling racquetball courts into
16 office spaces and classrooms.
Moravian College’s space on the first floor will include
academic areas for the athletic training program, including classrooms and lab
spaces. The second floor will include community space for students, conference
spaces and office areas.
A portion of the second floor will remain unfinished and
could be used for future growth.
The construction project should be completed in two
parts, Reed said.
The first deals with finishing the site improvements and
creating the exterior shell. The second part involves the fit and finish to all
of Moravian’s spaces.
Total construction cost has yet to be determined. Reed
said the overall cost of the project is estimated to be about $6 million, which
does not include the costs for St. Luke’s fit-out, since the health network has
its own contract.
One of the primary elements Moravian College will
establish at the site is a graduate athletic training program to be started in
fall 2016, Reed said.
“This is basically what we are envisioning as a
collaborative endeavor – academic and real world applications,” Reed said.
The final name of the facility has not been determined,
he added.
Source: LVB.com
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