GMU Recreation and Athletic Complex

Here follows an excerpt from the George Mason University library website:

George Mason University: A History
Mason's First Building Boom: Filling out the First Forty Acres during the 1970s

In late 1970 the 568-acre Fairfax Campus of George Mason College comprised six buildings and a parking lot. The tiny North, South, East, and West Buildings opened in September 1964 and hosted classrooms, labs, administrative and faculty offices, and the dining hall. Fenwick Library and the Lecture Hall were completed in the fall of 1967. A seventh building, the Arts and Sciences Building, which was later named Thompson Hall, was still under construction and would not open until September 1971. The steady increase in enrollment, coupled with Mason’s ambitious expansion program, necessitated additional buildings.

In 1970, a new wave of building began at Mason. Key buildings would begin to fill the first forty cleared acres of the original 147 given by the Town of Fairfax in 1959. Aerial photography of the campus from that era showed some kind of construction, no matter what year the photo was taken. At one point in 1974, three major construction projects within yards of each other (the Fenwick Library Tower, Robinson A, and the Student Union) were in progress simultaneously. Construction trailers and vehicles, steel framing, and large piles of dirt were an everyday part of the campus landscape for much of the 1970s.

The first new building to appear on campus after 1971 was the Physical Education Building, known today as the Recreation and Athletic Complex, or RAC. Planning for this space, which included both an indoor gymnasium and outdoor field, began in 1968. In May 1970 a $1.5 million contract for the construction was awarded to the Sherman Construction Corporation, and the groundbreaking took place on July 16, 1970. Chancellor Lorin Thompson pushed for construction to be completed by the beginning of the fall semester in September 1971. However, progress was plagued by construction-related delays, and the building was not opened until July 1972. The P.E. Building was closed and completely renovated and expanded in 2008. It reemerged in April 2009 and was renamed the Recreation and Athletic Complex.