A $3 million upgrade to Kentucky football weight room on board agenda this week
The UK Board of Trustees is set to approve a $3 million renovation to the Kentucky football team’s weight room at its meeting this week.
The project will include “electrical improvements and installation of durable, energy absorbing flooring to support new state-of-the-art weight and strength training equipment,” according to the board agenda item. The project is scheduled to be completed before the start of summer workouts.
“We’re always pushing the envelope,” new UK coach Will Stein told the Herald-Leader in a one-on-one interview in February. “Our job is to do that and have real reasons why we want to. Not just to ask, just to ask.
“In the age of NIL and (transfer) portal, I think people’s facilities started to just get old. Not that they were bad. This building is 10 years old. Let’s update it.”
UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart later confirmed to the Herald-Leader the facility improvements Stein was pushing for centered around the weight room.
The facility is also used by other UK teams when football players are not training. It is likely some of the current training equipment might be moved to one of the other three weight rooms used by the athletic department on campus.
The Nutter-Shively Complex, the former home of the football team before the construction of the Joe Craft Practice Facility in 2016, will also receive enhancements as part of the project, according to the agenda item. Those improvements will support more than 400 athletes total.
UK plans to use part of the $110 million internal loan approved by the board last year to fund the project with private funds eventually repaying that portion of the loan.
The $45 million Joe Craft Football Training center opened in 2016. Its 15,000 square foot weight room was built to include 20 multi-functional racks, free weights, specialty workout machines, a second-floor cardio deck and a corner wall with reinforced concrete to absorb the impact of medicine-ball training.