STANDISH – St. Joseph’s College announced Tuesday a $1 million gift from Harold Alfond for a student recreational center, a basketball arena that will replace the school’s “chamber of horrors.”

The college said it hopes to break ground in the spring of 1998 for the new sports facility, the third in Maine to bear the name of the 82-year-old philanthropist.

President David B. House hailed the gift as the largest in the college’s 85-year history and said it requires that St. Joseph’s match it by raising an identical amount for the project.

“With the support and enthusiasm of the entire St. Joseph’s College family, I know we can do it, and I look forward to the day when we complete the match and break ground for the Harold Alfond Student Center,” House said.

Alfond, the founder of the family-owned Dexter Shoe Co. that was sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 1993, did not attend the news conference where the gift was announced.

He was represented by Greg Powell, a trustee of the Harold Alfond Foundation, who said of Alfond: “All his life he’s picked winners. He believes St. Joseph’s College is a winner.”

Rick Simonds, who heads the school’s athletics department, confessed that he had mixed feelings about the pending demise of the “chamber of horrors,” the name given to the basketball venue where seats filled with screaming Monks fans approach the fringe of the court.

“As director of athletics and men’s basketball coach, I have very diverse feelings,” Simonds said. “The basketball coach is heartbroken and the director of athletics realizes it’s time.

The close proximity is “a tremendous home-court advantage,” he acknowledged. “It makes a crowd of 700 seem like 7,000.”

When the new center is built, the court where the Monks won 50 home games in a row and 93 of their last 95 will be used for intramural basketball games, Simonds said.

Gifts by Alfond, a Massachusetts native and a part owner of the Boston Red Sox, have led to construction of athletic arenas at Colby College and the University of Maine.

In addition to the gymnasium with basketball courts and a running track, the new facilty at St. Joseph’s will include a swimming pool, a fitness center, an aerobics and dance studio and a student lounge.

All classes at the four-year liberal arts college were interrupted Tuesday as the more than 1,000 students gathered with faculty and staff in a campus auditorium for House’s announcement.

Prior to his latest gift, Alfond donated more than $13 million to schools, hospitals and organizations in Maine.