With more people making use of the fitness center at the county complex, the DeKalb County Commission Monday night authorized the purchase of more equipment to accommodate the public.
No more space is available in the existing fitness room, so the added equipment will be placed in the History room of the county complex, at least temporarily. “In the short term, we’ve talked about purchasing some more cardio machines for what we’re calling the History room,” said County Mayor Mike Foster. “On Tuesdays and Thursdays, there are so many people in there (fitness room) that there is not enough equipment for them. We can put six or eight machines in there (History room),” he said.
Foster said bids will be accepted for the added equipment unless the county can make the purchase from the previous bid. “I have talked to the guy that we got the others from and he said we could get them at the same price we got the original ones for. They are all rebuilt machines. None of them are new. I believe some of them are $1,600. The treadmills are around $3,400. So it would be (total cost) in the low 20’s ($20,000) depending upon the number of treadmills and ellipticals. I think probably four of each one would be about the right number,” said County Mayor Foster.
To meet the growing demand, Foster said the county may have to expand the fitness room. “Long term, we’ve talked about putting a couple of walls on that back deck and moving all the weight machines and free weights out there and let the front room be strictly for cardio equipment,” he said.
“I was out there on several different nights and there was probably fifteen people waiting but part of them could use other machines. It’s a good thing to have this problem because we have right at one thousand members out there now. We’ve got to do things to keep the momentum going,” he said.