The Donald E. Young Center is a campus hub for Black Hills State University. Housing academics and athletics, as well as community access and amenities, this building is truly one of a kind with such a diverse user group. When the building opened in 1990, only about half of all locker rooms were used by athletes while the others were intended for the physical education program and community fitness members.
In the early 2010s, the University transitioned its athletics program from NAIA to NCAA Division II. As BHSU continued to expand Division II rosters, the Young Center gradually fell behind the current state of athletics at the university and in higher education. In 2023, university leadership hired Hollis + Miller to conduct a feasibility assessment for the facility, addressing urgent Title IX concerns while facilitating a compelling long-term vision.
The Young Center houses three men’s and six women’s locker rooms throughout the year and features an indoor track, pool, two weight rooms, coaching offices and the athletic department. Community members, staff and students have access to the pool, indoor track and one weight room. An academic wing also hosts programs in exercise science, outdoor education and physical education with an office suite supporting those same programs. One corner of the Young Center, immediately adjacent to one of the main entries, houses the Army National Guard. These occupancies were scattered throughout the building, causing inconvenient intersections between user groups and leading student-athletes to struggle to find places to call their own.
BHSU Athletics programs also faced equity challenges. While a prior renovation of the football, basketball and volleyball locker rooms elevated these spaces to Division II standards, the remaining programs were left untouched. Most students adopted rather than adapted, sharing space originally intended for physical education classes with public pool users and community events. Furthermore, a dozen football lockers were relocated to the men’s track locker room due to space constraints, creating a visible discrepancy between locker types and additional overlap between user groups. The growing programs also required additional staff and coaches, causing storage issues and space uses not properly supporting the necessary functions.
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As many across the country, the state of South Dakota is navigating space challenges including downsizing departments, increasing online learning, underutilized spaces and variable enrollment. As a result, adding even a single square foot of space to the Young Center would require state legislative approval, effectively putting additional square footage off-limits.
Accordingly, the design team was tasked with re-imagining a vision for the Young Center resolving immediate locker room disparities while continuing to create solutions for the office space shortages, enhancing the student-athlete experience and improving building zoning for all users. This would all be done within the building’s existing footprint while remaining operational throughout all phases of the transformation.
Given the diverse user group, Hollis + Miller conducted various customized engagement activities to gather valuable insights and nurture consensus, including extensive one-on-one and small group interviews with the project’s steering committee and every coaching staff member. Additionally, the team toured every space in the 172,000-square-foot facility, presented to university leadership, and conducted a campus-wide survey collecting feedback from more than 400 respondents, including student-athletes, coaches, administrators, building occupants, community members and potential alumni donors.
The insights gathered from these efforts provided several clear themes and unexpected points of agreement and difference among the user groups. For example, student-athletes repeatedly expressed that the Young Center felt like home on campus but asked for a greater emphasis on the locker room as a social space. They also expressed an interest in additional mental health support, suggesting many were not aware of the dedicated resources already available in the building. Academic users, located in an inefficient office suite in a remote part of the building, expressed a desire to be closer to the spaces where they teach with higher visibility, reportedly improving their sense of safety. Potential alumni donors expressed interest in financially supporting improvements to the building, including locker rooms.
Throughout these engagement activities, HMA sought points of wide agreement among the various groups–easy starting points for consensus–while identifying key points of difference in each stakeholder group’s priorities. Each insight helped the design team and BHSU chart the straightest course to consensus.
The Young Center is the central location of BHSU athletics. Within this building, there are multiple opportunities to meet like-minded people who are also athletes as well as provide you with access to your coaches one on one.
A dedicated sports learning environment that caters to the needs of teams, athletes, and coaches. Our vision is to provide our athletes with the best possible opportunities to have success in competition by making our facilities an asset and not a liability.
Hollis + Miller’s final report, crafted with additional input from the University’s steering committee and executive leadership, is backed by extensive interview and survey data. The vision for the Young Center is comprised of three phases: Phase 1 addresses immediate Title IX priorities, while the second phase’s “enabling projects” make medium-term moves required for the more significant long-term renovations contemplated in Phase 3. These projects are guided by the University’s authentic vision that the Young Center should remain the vibrant, busy campus/community hub it is today while accommodating tomorrow’s teams and providing a greater sense of ownership throughout the building for student-athletes.
Each phase comprises a small series of intentional, economical initiatives and renovations sized to be feasible within a given fiscal year’s resources while mindful of the bigger picture. Many of these projects–office and locker room renovations–were directly informed by the University’s criteria at the outset of the project. Others, however, arose from the design team’s intentional listening during the feasibility study. For example, it became clear that the building’s administrative staff and coaches expend significant mental overhead keeping track of equipment scattered throughout the building’s many isolated storage spaces and that investing University resources in streamlining the building’s storage through new storage solutions and general reorganization would have a significant positive impact on these employees’ day-to-day lives and the effectiveness of their programs.
Ultimately, a facility assessment’s recommendations are only impactful if they are implemented, and Hollis + Miller’s study was designed to promote just that. Empowered by a clear vision, BHSU moved quickly to implement the first phase of renovations, designed to address the most urgent Title IX issues by putting all of BHSU’s remaining locker rooms on equal footing. This project, designed by Hollis + Miller with local architecture and engineering partner TSP, will be completed in spring 2025.
About Hollis + Miller Architects
Hollis + Miller Architects, established in 1950, is a leading design firm dedicated exclusively to educational spaces. With offices in Kansas City, Missouri, and Castle Rock, Colorado, our firm specializes in creating innovative, research-driven environments that foster learning, community and growth. Our integrated team of architects, interior designers, educational planners, and environmental graphic designers collaborates with clients to deliver impactful, purpose-built solutions that inspire and support learners of all ages. For 75 years, Hollis + Miller has remained committed to designing spaces that leave a lasting legacy on education and the communities they serve. Learn more at www.hollisandmiller.com.
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