The Warren City School District's new Student Recreation and Wellness Center is starting to open up to students and staff in the district, with fitness equipment and the final finishing touches on the way.

The more than 100,000 square foot facility situated right next to the Warren G. Harding football stadium is two stories with 200 meter tracks on both levels.

It's not just for athletics and training.

"Our hope and vision is to create an alternate learning environment, a flexible learning space for students pre-school through grades 12," Steve Chiaro said, superintendent of Warren City Schools.

"It's trying to build a community stronger in our schools, and this is going to be the place, and the hub for learning for any building within the Warren city schools that want to take advantage of that opportunity."

The center boasts multiple classrooms on both floors, with a robotics room that cost $2 million to serve as a hub for the district's championship robotics team. Chiaro says it's a space unlike any other for a robotics team in northeast Ohio.

Other spaces are flexible learning areas where more than one classroom across the district can gather together for special projects and lesson plans.

"You can put more than one classroom of students together if they're working on a common project just like you would see in a student union setting at a local university," he said.

Chiaro says the study stairs when you enter the facility are another way to incorporate different settings that will help students prepare for higher education.

A golf simulator for students as young as pre-school and an e-sports room are located on the second floor.

"We had a 140 students express interest in a pilot program about a year ago, now we're creating our second lab here in the building," he said. "We had two students get scholarships last year, one to Kent and one to Akron, for e-sports," he said. "This is leading up to the technology that employers are looking for."

The student-run bistro in collaboration with AVI Food Systems on the first floor is in the process of being built. Chiaro expects it to open over the next several months. Students will learn how to run a a bistro, create the food, entrepreneurship, create a menu and being serve safe credentialed before they graduate.

Akron Children's Hospital is looking to provide pediatric healthcare in Warren at the facility and the district is in talks with adding a second healthcare provider at the location.