For starters, it’s not the Racquet Club anymore.

When the city-owned, um, sports facility in Park Meadows reopens around the end of November after a $10 million remodel, it will be known simply as the Park City Recreation Center. “The new name,” the city’s website explains, “will help dispel the myth the Racquet Club is privately owned.”

Actually, the word “remodel” doesn’t do it justice. Gone is the old metal building that covered the four indoor tennis courts. Gone are the old staff offices tucked in a corner at the east end of the building. Gone are the old lobby, pro shop and locker rooms. Other than the outdoor tennis courts and swimming pools, the only significant remnant of the old facility is the basketball gym.

Out of the ashes of the old Racquet Club has risen a new facility that the recreation staff hopes will better meet the needs of residents and visitors, from kids to senior citizens. Among the new amenities are a three-lane walking/jogging track, three group fitness studios, an expanded weight and cardio area, a “bouldering cave” with a 12-foot climbing wall, a game room, an improved child-care facility, larger locker rooms and a new pro shop.

“In the old building we didn’t have a whole lot of things for kids to do when the pool was closed,” says Ken Fisher, Park City recreation manager. “Hopefully with the bouldering cave and the game room, we’ll have kids coming in here to hang out. It’ll have more of a recreation center (feel) than the feel of a private club.”

On the other hand, people familiar with the old Racquet Club won’t get lost in the new Recreation Center. There are still four indoor tennis courts in roughly the same location as the old ones. The main entrance and lobby are in about the same place, as are the locker rooms. But people will look in vain for the restaurant. That’s not part of the current project, although Fisher says there are utility lines installed and space allocated at the east end of the building should someone want to build a restaurant later.

The Racquet Club had its origins in a private facility built in Park Meadows in the mid-1970s. Park City later acquired the club, turned it into a public facility and made significant upgrades including a gym and new swimming pools. However, the original metal structure covering the lobby and tennis courts remained. It became, in the words of nearby resident John Halsey, an eyesore and an embarrassment.

“If it was raining there were buckets all over the place and water dripping down. There were exposed pipes for the heating, for the gas,” says Halsey, who is in his fifth year as a member of the Park City Recreation Advisory Board, which has provided guidance to the city on the project.

Guidance also came from a community survey conducted about five years ago. In it, Fisher says, the city asked residents to name the number one way to improve recreational opportunities in town.

“And resoundingly number one was to renovate this facility,” Fisher says. “If it had come out: ‘Hey, build more sports fields, build this or that,’ that’s what we would have done. So it was really the community that drove the project.”

Fisher says that survey was followed by an assessment of the current facility.

“It wasn’t an easy decision for the City Council to make,” he says. “We had talked about phasing projects, trying to keep the tennis-court building. And when it came right down to it, we did a study of the infrastructure of the building and the most cost-effective long-term solution was to rip it down and start over.”

Besides being woefully out of code, the old building was the city’s biggest energy user, Fisher says.

The recession put a damper on the council’s discussions about spending millions on a new building. “At the same time, pricing came down,” Fisher says. “And, I mean, we’re lucky. We got an incredible price on this building. If we’d waited ’til now to do it, it would probably be 10, 15 percent more to get it done.”

Halsey says that council members Roger Harlan and Candy Erickson were the project’s strongest advocates.

“They weren’t going to take no for an answer,” he says. “They needed to get this job done. They were both long, long, long-time residents that used the facility. They knew that it was just in terrible shape. They knew the history behind it. So they were both very instrumental. Liza Simpson has been a big advocate as well asked a lot of tough questions, and I think there were moments where she questioned herself, but ultimately she was very, very instrumental in pushing this forward.”

Construction or, rather, demolition began in the summer of 2010. Although his house is across the street from the facility, Halsey says the project has not been a big imposition on nearby residents.

With the scheduled opening a little more than two months away, workers are now busy finishing the interior spaces. Fisher says pouring of the concrete floor for the tennis courts is due to begin later this week. The new courts will meet USTA standards governing the amount of space behind the baselines.

Workers are also installing expansive glass walls that will overlook the west end of the tennis courts from both the lower level (lobby) and the upper level, where many of the exercise machines will be located.

The upper level also houses the walking/jogging track (around the outside of the tennis courts), the three group fitness studios including one with a wooden floor for aerobics and another with a floor designed specifically for yoga and a storage room for exercise equipment. Many of the rooms have large exterior windows with breathtaking views of the mountains.

Fisher says the city will be moving some of the current Nautilus equipment to the new building from the Racquet Club’s temporary home on Iron Horse Drive. But some new equipment is being ordered new from FreeMotion, a manufacturer based in Logan, Utah.

“The nice thing about it is it’s ADA-accessible equipment, so that if someone were to come up here in a wheelchair, they could come in and access the machines,” he says.

Oh yes — in addition to a wide staircase leading up from the lobby, crews are installing an elevator linking the two floors.

Fisher says user fees for the new Recreation Center will reflect modest increases over the old Racquet Club, but notes that scholarships are available for those qualify.

“If some kid shows up at the front door and he wants to go swimming and he doesn’t have his two bucks, we let him in,” Fisher says. “Obviously, if it’s the same kid every day, we might make a phone call.”

For more information on the project, please visit http://www.parkcity.org/index.aspx?page=600