King's receives donation for new weight room

It’s official: King’s has a new weight room, complete with new equipment smell for the next little while.
The new weight room features a full set of barbells and free weights, padded floors, yoga and medicine balls, multi-use machines, a fancy bench press and windows looking out over the gym and Dalhousie.
According to Advancement Director Adriane Abbott, the new space was made possible by a grant from an anonymous alumna in the hopes of making the weight room more accessible to more students, particularly women.
“The space was not a friendly and welcoming space for anyone,” says Abbott, citing the old weight room’s lack of space, sealed-off location, poor air quality and aging equipment.
So far, the grant’s covered “well over half” of the expenses.
“She was the catalyst.”
“Every time you went down in there, it was you alone with a bunch of sweaty guys,” says Wendy Margetts, a third-year Environmental Science major. “There weren’t any weights under the thirty-range, either.”
Most of the new weight room’s planning and design was done by Facilities Director Alex Doyle, who coordinated with Athletics Director Neil Hooper.
“It’s a 23 year issue,” says Hooper on the old weight room, “I remember coming in then and saying ‘this is not a great space.’”
To help facilitate the change, the Athletics Department donated their old office space to storage for the school sports teams and moved to the other side of the gym. The Department was also responsible for acquiring all the new equipment, which Abbott estimates to have been around $20,000. The renovations are still ongoing.
“It was a smooth process, with only a couple of delays,” says Hooper.
Margetts says she’ll certainly be using the weight room more often in its new location.