News & Insights

Paul Brailsford and Chris Dunlavey were interviewed by Campus Rec magazine about the past, present, and future of CENTERS, Brailsford & Dunlavey’s campus recreation management arm. An excerpt is below, and the full article is available at campusrecmag.com.

When program management firm Brailsford & Dunlavey (B&D) — parent company of CENTERS — completed the business plan for the Ray Meyer Fitness & Recreation Center at DePaul University, the school loved the plan’s ambition.

But there was one problem: DePaul didn’t believe it could implement the plan on its own. The university needed help running the new 123,000-square-foot facility and turned to B&D, which at the time wasn’t set up to operate a recreation center.

“We believed we could do it, but we knew it would require building a team of the highest quality of collegiate recreation professionals, who were also the right fit for DePaul,” said Paul Brailsford, a principal and co-founder of B&D and CENTERS, LLC. “B&D was not set up to operate a recreation center, so the CENTERS partnership was born.”