Since 1995, every student, staff, or adult who has walked into the weight room has walked on the same floor and used the same equipment. That’s about to change.

This summer, the weight room will undergo a massive remodel, complete with new equipment and floor plan.

“When we plan things like this, we have a meeting in February the year before we want to do it. For the new equipment, we actually started planning this two years ago,” said Dan Johnson, Director of Activities. “It’s a collaboration between the athletics office, the Physical Education department, and the Lindbergh Center as part of the Minnetonka community.”

The new weight room will be a result of extensive planning by the Lindbergh Center staff, Physical Education teachers, and the Athletic Department because all three have individual uses for the weight room.

Usually, the Athletic Department uses money for specific sports and to update equipment. For example, they might purchase new helmets for the football team. Last year, the department updated the turf, goalposts, and soccer goals on the stadium field.

The new weight room is also more expensive than the usual upgrades.

“We are using capital money and, usually, you would use capital money for new hockey helmets or something smaller,” Johnson said. “But we’re using $60,000-70,000 for new equipment and repairing old ones.”

Despite the expensive renovation for last year’s turf and this year’s weight room, Johnson believes that there isn’t an emphasis on updating facilities right now.

“I think we’re always working on updating and upgrading whenever we can. Right now, we’re in the process of looking at our baseball and practice soccer/football fields and so on and is that something we’re going to turf in the future. Any chance we can, we want to upgrade,” Johnson said.

A project for next year could be to upgrade the baseball field to have a turf outfield due to the conditions of the current grass. Along with that could come a new softball field and converting the grass fields by the Lindbergh Center into turf fields. The Athletic Department has had people come in and give ideas and pricing for the potential makeover.

“Just talking about it right now – no plans, nothing definitive. We would look at doing something with baseball over the spring and summer and then soccer/football [grass fields] in the fall,” Johnson said. “Our grass for the baseball field is overused and under-cared for so there isn’t much left of it.”

As for the weight room, with the remodel going on during the summer, the Lindbergh weight room will be closed. There will be a temporary weight room in the newly built shed in the far end of the stadium. The temporary weight room will have its usual summer hours.

“Over the summer, we’ll move eight or 10 pieces [of equipment] from the weight room out to the new shed in the stadium,” Johnson said. “Tyler Caldwell, our new strength coach, is going to be in contact with all the coaches and arrange times for each sport to come in and lift.”