For those who use Beyer Gym, relief from the decrepit floor may still be far in the future.

“We are looking forward to replacing [the floor] in the near future,” said Larry Cooney, director of recreation services.

Cooney said Recreation Services officials hope to be able to replace the floor of Beyer Gym with a multi-purpose recreation floor.

He described Beyer Gym’s floor as being in “poor to fair condition.”

Cooney said the weather is one of the main reasons for the condition of Beyer Gym’s floor.

“The floor was installed in 1964, and it’s a wood floor, but due to moisture each year, the type of floor system it is, it’s caused it to buckle and heave each summer and then that loosens the floorboards,” he said. “The floor finally settles down during the wintertime and it’s playable, but it’s definitely not in good condition.”

Adam Infante, a regular user of Beyer Gym, said the floor was so bad it was a safety hazard.

“It’s terrible,” said Infante, senior in political science. “There’s so many dead spots in this floor, the paint’s coming up. I think it could cause some serious injury if they don’t take care of it.”

Cooney said he agreed the floor may pose a safety hazard to the people who use it.

“During the times of the year that it heaves due to the excessive humidity, it does pose some safety problems at that time,” he said. “If it’s bad, we’ll barricade that section of the floor off and not let people play on it.

“Other than that, in some sections, [the floor] heaves and then retracts and loosens the boards. We’ve tried to keep those [areas] fixed so that they don’t create a safety hazard,” he said.

Recreation Services already has looked into replacing the old floor, Cooney said.

“We’ve submitted a request to the capital planning committee at the university to replace the floor,” Cooney said. “It’s been submitted, so we’re right now looking for a source of funding.”

Cooney said Recreation Services has a section of its budget earmarked for repair and upkeep of the recreation facilities, but the fund is not enough to cover replacing the floor of Beyer Gym.

He estimated that a new floor would cost $133,000 to $140,000.

Peter Muljadi, junior at Ames High School, said he uses Beyer Gym often and thinks that the floor needs to be replaced.

“It sucks. I’ve been playing here for a long time, and it never changes.” he said. “It’s really slippery. I’ve fallen down so many times on this floor.”

Adam Deering, freshman in pre-business, said he thinks the floor needs to be replaced, but he doesn’t think that it poses a safety threat, just a nuisance.

“It’s slippery and it’s got a lot of dead spots,” he said.

Cooney said there are no objections on the part of the ISU administration to replacing the floor.

“There’s a lot of support from the administrators and the students to get it replaced,” he said. “There’s a lot of people looking for the money; it’s just a matter of finding it.”