An Athletic Center for All

Carroll College’s Hunthausen Activity Center (HAC) is a campus-based PE center for non-varsity athletic use in Helena, Montana. The HAC is a Morrison-Maierle Hunthausen Activity Center“design-build” project that contains a 24,427-square-foot facility containing a gym, racquetball court, cardio, and weights areas, two multipurpose rooms, grand hall, lounge areas, office area, climbing tower, and bouldering wall.

This building replaces a facility that was built in 1969. At that time, the college had 183 varsity athletes. Today Carroll has 380 varsity athletes so there was no room for students to exercise. This new facility helps the college meets the needs of its ever-growing college population.

In order to achieve the full footprint for the building, the team had to dismantle a portion of the nearby PE Center that contained the swimming pool, which over time, had degraded the structure due to chlorine exposure and leaks. At certain points in time, the pool was losing 15,000 gallons of water per day which was a concern for the structural engineering team as they knew there was a possibility of dealing with the water-saturated ground below the new structure.