Rutgers announces September grand opening for RWJBarnabas Health Athletic Performance Center

On Tuesday afternoon, the Rutgers athletics department released a video tour of the new RWJBarnabas Health Athletic Performance Center. The tour was led by athletic director Pat Hobbs and RWJBarnabas Health President & CEO Barry H. Ostrowsky. In the tweet sent by the Rutgers Athletics twitter account, they announced a grand opening date of September. The facility had been slated to originally open in mid-July, but obviously that date has now been pushed back slightly.

In the Rutgers press release on Tuesday, it was stated “The 307,000-square-foot, four-story facility and parking deck that rose via partnership, the R Big Ten Build campaign, and tax credits under an Economic Redevelopment and Growth Grant, will begin welcoming tenants later this summer with an official grand opening slated for September.”

In my interview with Rutgers men’s basketball head coach Steve Pikiell on Tuesday, he said the hope was for his program to move in by the middle of July.

Pushing back the official opening by a few weeks isn’t a big deal if that’s what is needed to properly complete the interior work. The state of the art facility’s primary purpose will be as the new practice home for the men’s and women’s basketball, wrestling, and gymnastics programs. All are winter sports, so a September official open date is still before those programs are officially in-season.

The facility will also house the offices for those four programs, serve as the headquarters for the RWJBarnabas sports medicine program, feature a cafe for student-athletes focused on healthy meals and a merchandise store open to the public.

You can watch the tour of the new faculty via RVision below. It’s going to be an impressive addition and major step forward in pushing Rutgers closer to a Big Ten level from a facilities standpoint.