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Portland-based is getting ready to add another trophy to its mantle.

The company has won an Outstanding Sports Facility award from the for its design of Oregon State University’s McAlexander Field House recreation center.

With recreation centers becoming an increasingly important venue for university life, as well as important admissions recruitment tools, Michael Thrailkill, architect and project manager for YGH, said the $2.2 million renovation of the approximately 34,000-square-foot facility was simply necessary.

鈥淵ou had a giant facility, one of the largest buildings right in the middle of campus, completely underutilized,鈥� he said.

Built in 1911 as a barracks building, Thrailkill said the university had repurposed the historic building as a recreation center in the 1950s. Over the years though, the building fell to neglect and became an聽unmonitored and unsafe complex.

With a 10,000-squre-foot indoor turf field, two urethane-floored game courts, batting cages, classrooms, a 37-foot climbing wall and a 60-foot bouldering wall, approximately 600 students per day have been using the facility since it opened in February 2011.

The award is for one of nine projects that NIRSA will recognize at its national conference in Tampa, Fla., from March 27 to 30, and Thrailkill said it’s a valued distinction. The company has received the award for three other recreation centers in the Northwest, and he said that helped it land another project it is currently designing for the University of Hawaii.

鈥淪o it definitely is an important award to win, and it leads to further work,鈥� Thrailkill said.