Loyola unveils Norville Center

What inspires a man to donate millions of dollars to his alma mater?

Allow Allan Norville to explain.

“I grew up on the South Side,” Norville said Thursday. “Came from a poor family and would never have had the opportunity to go to school here without the scholarship that they gave me.”

Norville, a 1960 Loyola graduate who started for three years on the basketball team, went on to make his fortune in Tucson, Ariz.

Now a member of Loyola’s board of trustees, Norville and his wife, Alfie, offered the primary gift that led to the $26 million Norville Center for Intercollegiate Athletics that opens March 14.

It’s the first phase of Loyola’s five-part, $100 million “reimagine” campaign designed to improve life for students on the Lake Shore campus.

The Norvilles, new athletic director M. Grace Calhoun and 500 students, athletes and well-wishers gathered outside Thursday for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“As a result of that scholarship,” Norville told the crowd, “I was able to carry forth the principles that (Loyola) taught me and build a business that resulted in us being able to do what we’re doing here today.

“We have a beautiful building here. The bricks, the mortar, the glass is beautiful. But what will really make this beautiful ... is the coaches and student-athletes that will be part of this and be able to take us to a higher level in Division I.”

The three-story Norville Center, attached to the south and east sides of the Gentile Center, features massive weight room and sports medicine facilities. Locker rooms and lounges for the basketball teams. Offices for all of the coaches and administrators.

Basically, it allows Loyola to bid a fond adieu to Alumni Gym (nee 1923) about 30 years after it outlived its usefulness. It will be razed after graduation and a student union will take its place.

“It’s definitely been cramped,” said sophomore basketball player Ben Averkamp. “We were at least fortunate to have our own locker. You look at the other sports, they were really struggling.

“Volleyball, they were sending guys out in the hallway because they couldn’t all fit in the locker room. Same with soccer.”

And when athletes crammed into Alumni Gym for a workout — or coaches and administrators worked in their office — Alumni Gym’s random heating patterns never allowed anyone to be comfortable.

Several years ago, former Wright State basketball coach Paul Biancardi accused Loyola’s Jim Whitesell of messing with the thermostat at halftime.

“He said, ‘What are you doing about the heat? It’s so hot in our locker room,’” Whitesell said. “I turned to him and said, ‘You oughta be in my office every day. Tomorrow, it could be 52 degrees in here.’”

Whitesell half-joked when he claimed the new facilities allow him to take recruits through the locker room for the first time in five years.

“It’s night and day what we’ve had,” he said. “In the long run, it’s definitely going to make a big difference.”