Whispers around Simpson College’s campus became louder recently about the possible development of a new athletic facility that may be coming sooner than the Storm thought.
Director of Athletics Marty Bell is excited about what is in store for future athletic facility expansions.
“The first facility project we are evaluating would be a new training facility for men’s and women’s gymnastics with additional training space for cheer, dance, track and field, cross country, and swim and dive, depending on how we plan to construct this facility,” Bell said.
He explained that the department’s ability to evaluate a potential site, costs, funding and timeline has been given the go-ahead.
“We are in the midst of that [approval] process right now with the hopes of securing all four of those elements for a final board approval this spring, with construction immediately following. The projected time for completion and usage would be for fall 2025,” Bell said.
Last month, Simpson’s president, Jay Byers, sent an email to faculty and staff, stating the development process for the facility is in its final stages.
“In the email Jay [Byers] sent out not too long ago, he said, ‘The board has approved a new gymnastics facility to support the growth of the Simpson men’s and women’s programs,’” Interim Academic Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs CoryAnne Harrigan said.
“We need to have things that are multi-purpose, so the plan is to get that going in the summer. The ‘cross-your-fingers’ hope is to have that done by the fall, but that might be optimistic,” Harrigan said.
In terms of having multi-purpose facilities, the controversial press release announcing the addition of acrobatics and tumbling to Simpson athletics went silent until recently because of the new facility projects. Before, students were understandably wary about adding new sports when space was already so limited.

“This space also gives us the opportunity of potentially adding two new sports; acrobatics and tumbling and stunt,” Bell said.
While the athletic department’s main focus right now is the finalization of the gymnastics facility, there is also strategic planning happening surrounding a new indoor athletic facility that would accommodate even more sports.
“The other project is still in the strategic vision stage, which I developed when I arrived as the athletic director,” Bell said. “This would be an indoor training facility that would include a full 200-meter indoor competition track, space for all indoor field events, 70-75 yards of field turf inside the track oval, four indoor tennis courts and dedicated locker room and reception areas that would house our track and field, baseball, softball, tennis and golf teams.”
Bell went on to explain that this space would also be used by intramurals and host the potential new programs for men’s and women’s lacrosse.
Mystery around possible locations was debunked as Bell explained the gymnastics facility would potentially be located west of the softball fields on the north end of that open area and the future indoor athletics facility would be built on the big open field along Iowa Ave.
To add to what Harrigan mentioned earlier, Bell stated that the building of the gymnastic facility is projected to start in early May of this year, pending approval of everything else, while the other facility is still to be determined.
As far as funds are concerned, those are also to be determined.
“That is all being worked on currently and to be determined,” Bell said.
With these exciting new developments, the number of students that take part in athletics may start to grow even more as opportunities for sports programs, new and old, will finally have the space they deserve.