JAMESTOWN, NY (WNY News Now) – After being closed for two years, a local community college is looking to re-open their gym to the public.

SUNY JCC had to close their publicly accessible gym when COVID hit, and even had to refund memberships to some. Now, two years later, the college hopes to reopen their Total Fitness Program to the public within the next few months as part of a four-phase plan.

“We shut down for a couple of years actually, we refunded memberships because we knew we weren’t going to be opening for a while, so we know people are anxious to get back in the gym again, back in the fitness center again,” said Executive Director Steve Riczker. “We’re very excited here at JCC to be working on a four-phase program to re-open our Total Fitness center.”

Right now, only students and faculty have access to the fitness center, but hopefully within the next month or so, it will fully re-open.

“The second phase of our multi-phase plan is to reopen to the public, probably sometime in October,” said Riczker, “Then we’re gonna be working on kind of a face-lift. We’re gonna be refurbishing a little bit, getting things spruced up a little bit. We’re looking into new fitness equipment that we’re gonna be potentially bringing in.”

After all these changes are in place, phase four will commence.

“Then the final phase, don’t quote me on this, what we’re trying to, in order to be competitive and also to meet the needs of our members, we’re trying to work on a 24 hour access to the fitness center,” said Riczker.

Staff stress just how important fitness is.

“Fitness is extremely important, not only for students, it improves their grade point average. It’s been statistically shown that the students that are healthier actually do perform better educationally, but it’s also important for the general public, for their general health and well-being,” Riczker said.

The fitness center has a wide variety of work-out machinery, an indoor track, and even a pool.

“What we have with total fitness is not just the traditional weight room, we also have free-weights, dumbbells, a variety of different weight benches. We also have cardio equipment, but what we also have is a pool,” said Riczker.

To learn about memberships and opening dates, those interested can visit the Jamestown Community College website SUNYJCC.edu.