Students may lose parking to faculty
Faculty will lose 140 parking stalls later this year with construction on a new recital hall starting, and students may lose a popular parking lot.
Lisa Leishman, director of Parking and Transportation Services, presented five of the options that are being considered to recover the lost parking in the Associated Students of Utah State University Executive Council meeting Tuesday.
While four of the options would involve having faculty park in other lots on the east side of campus that are currently student “B” lots, one option would make the Premium-B lot next to the Taggart Student Center a faculty parking lot.
Leishman said her department had been told by the administration that only 40 parking stalls would be lost with construction starting, but she found out last week it would be 140.
“It’s a little bit of a surprise,” Leishman said.
Moving faculty to the Premium-B lot would be beneficial because there are exactly 140 stalls in the lot. The change would also reduce traffic congestion where students are often found waiting as long as 20 minutes for a stall. The lot would also be central and convenient to many employees, Leishman said.
The disadvantage of such a change is that the lot is “extremely convenient” for students and visitors. The parking department would also lose about $25,000 in annual revenue that is made by people exiting the lot.
Student Advocate Vice President Les Essig said that of the five options, the one which would take the Premium-B lot away from students would have the most negative effect.
“The students are obviously directly affected in that one,” he said. “The others are a little more inadvertent.”
The other options would move faculty to lots such as the Radio/TV lot, south of the Nutrition Food Sciences building or south of U.S. Highway 89.
Engineering Senator Adam Jones asked Leishman how the parking change would impact concerts at the Kent Concert Hall, noting that the lot fills up fast when there are events there.
“You’ll find people parking as far away as south of Old Main,” Leishman said. “There is a plan to build a parking structure.”
The plans for a parking terrace however, Leishman said, are 10 years away. She said the administration has told her department to start budgeting for a structure to be built there.
Graduate Studies Vice President Stephanie Kukic said she thought eliminating the Premium B-lot would make students much more angry than doing something like raising the price of a “B” parking permit.
Essig asked if the revenue earned from selling student “B” permits was greater than what was earned from selling the more expensive faculty permits. Leishman said she did not have that information available at the time.
Students would be willing to pay more for premium parking if this became a revenue issue, Public Relations Vice President Ashley Stolworthy said.
“Our university has come to a standstill in money,” she said. “Students are willing, if they are educated about things like this, to step it up.”
-str@cc.usu.edu