Roughly two years after being shut down, the renovated Chick Evans Field House will open at 4 p.m. today.

The former basketball arena will now provide students who use the Office of Campus Recreation with an alternative during peak hours. The building will be used by Kinesiology and Physical Education classes and ROTC programs in the morning, said John Sweeney, director of Campus Recreation, but will be open for student use from 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday because that is when the Rec Center gets the most traffic.

The fieldhouse cost about $2.3 million to renovate, he said.

Sweeney said the Rec gets an average of 2,000 visitors daily, but that number goes up in the winter months to 2,400 to 2,500 visitors. He said the new fieldhouse will go a long way to alleviate the congestion.

Some NIU students agree and look forward to the opening.

“I love using the track at the Rec, but during the winter, it’s just too crowded. But now I can use the one at the fieldhouse when it gets really busy,” said Molly Ragsdale, sophomore meteorology major.

Besides a one-seventh-mile-long track, the newly renovated fieldhouse offers students aerobics rooms, a cardio room, locker rooms and eight multi-purpose courts. The new courts can be used for basketball, volleyball, floor hockey or indoor soccer.

“I usually don’t use the Rec center basketball courts because they are always packed, but now I think I will use them a lot more,” said Jarrod Rice, junior journalism major.

Although the fieldhouse was closed for general use in the summer, it was used for NIU basketball and volleyball camps, Sweeney said.

NIU’s athletic department previously was located in the fieldhouse until the Convocation Center opened in 2002.

“It is going to be a great addition – a big improvement for physical education and ROTC,” Sweeney said.

Ragsdale said she thought that the renovation was worth the money because of the additional opportunities for students to play basketball and other sports and the added classrooms.