Pfc. Park Yong-kam readies his shot while Pvt. Kim Pil-koo looks on Wednesday as the soldiers play pool with brand new equipment at the U.S. Army’s renovated Community Activities Center on Camp Walker in Taegu, South Korea. Both are assigned to U.S. Army’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 19th Theater Support Command. (Galen Putnam / Courtesy of U.S. Army)
PYONGTAEK, South Korea — The Army recreation center, one of the biggest draws for soldiers in Taegu, South Korea, has reopened at Camp Walker after a major overhaul, officials said Wednesday.
The Camp Walker Community Activities Center reopened Monday after a $1.5 million project that began in July, said Don Cannata, Morale, Welfare and Recreation director with the Army’s Area IV Support Activity in Taegu.
The center is “the second most-used facility in the community” after Camp Walker’s Kelly Fitness Center, Cannata said. It offers activities including television, movies, pool, and board games and houses the post library, he said.
“The whole facility offers quite a spectrum of different types of activities,” he said. “Almost everybody in the community uses at least one of them.”
Changes to the center include a high-tech multimedia room for watching TV, movies and other video presentations; new foosball, pool and air hockey tables; and soundproof booths in which soldiers can practice musical instruments, Cannata said. The center had no such booths before the renovation.
In the multimedia room, “they’ve got three different TV screens,” said Cannata. “One is a movie screen that can be raised and lowered electronically. It has the capability to use any kind of a computerized media … DVDs, PowerPoint presentations … and it’s got a Bose surround-sound system.
“It’s a marked improvement … what used to be there was a big TV and lots of seats,” Cannata said. “It’s a much nicer environment.”
Also, the Army’s Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers program now is housed in the center — the first time the program has had permanent office space in Taegu, Cannata said.
“It actually boosts the morale for the soldiers, knowing that they have a comfortable facility to come into,” said BOSS coordinator Sgt. Kenneth Richardson, who has used the center before the renovation. He specifically praised the addition of soundproof music practice rooms.
“That was highly recommended” by soldiers in Taegu, who had lamented the lack of such practice rooms, Richardson said. “So to me, that’s kind of the greatest addition.”
