When it opened in 2000, the gleaming UPMC Sports Medicine Complex on the South Side became the vision for all that was possible in shedding Pittsburgh’s smokestack industry past.

Now, UPMC and the Steelers are planning a $10 million upgrade to the center, which will include a 5,000-square-foot expansion of the weight training and conditioning facilities on the first and second floors; improvements to the indoor practice facility; a redesigned front lobby; and technology updates.

Work will begin after the current football season and finish in time for the start of the 2016 season, Steelers president Art Rooney II said Tuesday at a news conference. “It has been a great relationship with UPMC,” Mr. Rooney said. “It really set the standard for what training facilities in the NFL would become.”

The upgrade will come with a name change to honor Mr. Rooney’s father, team chairman Dan Rooney: the UPMC Rooney Sports Medicine Complex. The deal also includes a 15-year renewal of the facility’s lease by the Steelers, who will split the renovation costs with UPMC.

Combining athletics and medicine was “very much the vision of Dan Rooney,” UPMC president and CEO Jeffrey Romoff said. The result “created what was entirely unprecedented,” he said.

Concussion testing and treatment, athletic training and medical imaging are among the complex’s services provided for high school and collegiate athletes, not just the football team. The South Side complex also includes outdoor practice facilities, which required 9 feet of fill to keep them out of the river floodplain when the center was built.

The original cost of the complex was $30 million, which translates into $41.4 million today. Until the late 1980s, the tract was home to the sprawling Jones & Laughlin steel plant, which gave way to the sports medicine center, a shopping district, movie theater and other amenities nearby.

 

post-gazette.com

Report Abuse