Caleb Warnock

"This will help old people live longer."

The brand-new community center opened on Tuesday, and Thursday was Tomlinson's second visit. Armed with an iPod playing Pat Boone and other 1950s hits, he has a goal to walk 3 miles a day.

"It's a nice place to walk, with a rubberized trail, and it's cool in the summer and warm in the winter," he said.

The doctor has asked him to walk for his health, he said. At one time he went to Orem's recreation center, but with the price of gas what it is, and with the new rec center just four blocks from his home, the choice was easy.

The new $7 million recreation center features a half-dozen classrooms for community education programs and is even outfitted for cooking classes. There is a single gym and a double gym, all able to be halved. There is a gallery for rotating local art, a cardio room with 27 pieces of equipment, an aerobics and dance room with spinning machines, a track ringing the second floor where 6.5 laps equals a mile, a 25-piece weight room, a day-care room, a conference room, family changing rooms and locker rooms.

A second phase, several years away, will bring a pool to the facility, said recreation manager Jay Dee Nielsen.

On Thursday, the rec center was also the site of a video shoot of sorts. While giving a tour of the facility, Nielsen was stopped short when he discovered someone had set up a strange sort of mechanical object on the basketball court. Inquiring, he discovered that an inventor was trying out a contraption to automatically coach amateur basketball players.

As it turned out, the contraption had traveled from Texas to be in Pleasant Grove. Warner Blair of Fort Worth, Texas, invented what he calls Robo Trainer. He filmed a video demonstrating the machine for his Web site, Robotrainer.com, where he hopes to sell his invention, but his sons told him his video was, in a word, terrible.

He agreed to meet his California son at the home of his Utah son, Aaron Blair, and shoot a new demonstration in Pleasant Grove's brand-new facility.

"We wanted to film in a nice facility and not [an LDS] Church facility," Aaron Blair said.

Lynn Durrant of Pleasant Grove was also walking the track on Thursday. He said he had not used Pleasant Grove's older, and much smaller, recreation center, but he and his wife decided to buy annual passes to the new rec center after touring it. Thursday was his first time using the center.

"I need to lose weight and get healthier," he said, noting he hopes to work out here at least three times a week.

The city's former building had less than 20,000 square feet, while the new building has 77,000 square feet, Nielsen said. The old building will be rented out for craft shows, dances and family parties for now.

To accommodate the new building, Nielsen said he has had to hire a few new staffers, and will begin to add fitness classes as demand grows. On Thursday the new rec center was fairly quiet, but Nielsen said that is normal on sunny summer afternoons.

Passes to the new facility went on sale a couple of weeks ago at a discount and are now available for $150 for individuals who are residents, up from $125 at the old center, and $325 for families, up from $200 at the old center. Day passes are now $3, up from $2.

In the past two weeks, 176 family passes have been sold, Nielsen said. The rec center has had between 100 and 125 visitors a day since opening.

"It is tremendous," he said of the public's response to the new building. "People are excited about it. They like the building."

That sentiment was echoed by a woman who passed Nielsen on the second-floor track as he was giving a tour.

"Love the new building," the woman said to Nielsen. "Love the new equipment."