The university plans to begin several parking projects over the holiday, including paving the gravel parking lot between McComas Hall and Hardy Road and gating Lee Boulevard and the parking lot south of Lloyd-Ricks.
The improved McComas lot, which will cost $650,000 raised through increased decal prices, will have 237 commuter east zone spaces, a number that is probably slightly lower than the number of cars that currently park in the lot, project manager Ben Johnson said.
“You could probably jam in a lot more cars now that it’s not a well-defined parking lot than when we go in and organize it and put in landscaping median, and when you organize the driving lanes, circulation lanes and those type of things, you will reduce parking in that particular area slightly,” he said.
However, he said, he thinks people will be happy that the lots are paved.
In addition to landscaping, the new lots will include increased lighting, Johnson said. Currently, the lighting in the area is scattered and was developed piecemeal over the years, he said.
“I think the lighting improvements will certainly help with safety and security, and the landscaping will just all make us feel better about our campus,” he said.
The lot will close Dec. 12, so students, faculty and staff should remove any vehicles from the lot by this date. The area will be fenced off to both vehicles and pedestrians during construction for safety reasons.
Work may begin as early as today on the gating of the parking lot southwest of the Lloyd-Ricks building, director of support services Paul Welch said. Work will probably take several weeks, he said.
The gated parking will be available to any faculty and staff through a lottery such as the one used to allot spaces in the gated lots near Allen Hall.
He said he is not sure whether the gates will be active during the spring semester.
The university will also put gates on Lee Boulevard, Welch said. “The plan is to gate Lee Boulevard in front of the Cobb Institute of Archaeology on the east side and the YMCA Building, or the post office, on the west side,” he said.
The university is gating the section of the street “because we’ve got three parking lots in there that are staff only, and we’ve had a number of complaints trying to keep students out of those parking areas,” Welch said.
The three lots include a small lot behind Harned Hall, a large lot between George and Magruder halls, and the Lee Hall and McCain Hall parking lot.
He said one group of faculty and staff wants the university to put a full-time person in the parking lot behind Harned to keep students out, something that is not economically feasible. Gating the streets is the most efficient thing to do and will allow access to the street after hours and during special occasions.
Welch said gating Lee Boulevard may cause problems for visitors and others trying to access the center of campus, but the benefits outweigh the problems.
“The university needs to rethink how we handle visitors,” he said. “The common way of thinking now is that if you want to come here, you just come out and park anywhere you want, and it’s the university’s problem.”
Johnson said parking in the McComas lot should not cause a problem while it’s closed. The university has scheduled 150 days for the work, which should be completed May 10, leaving the possibility of closure during the entire spring semester.
“In that area there is a great deal of unimproved parking … that can accommodate everybody for the time being,” he said.
Welch expressed similar sentiments.
“There will probably be some inconvenience for students who want to park right by the door,” he said. “Throughout the fall semester, I’ve regularly ridden through the east side, and even Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 10 o’clock, I can find parking spots,” he added.
He said about 300 east zone parking spaces will be lost during construction.
The fact that MSU’s enrollment usually drops between 1,000 and 1,300 students from the fall semester to the spring semester due to graduation and other reasons will help to alleviate any problems, he said.
“That will take some of our demand off, and that was some of our reasoning for not doing it in the fall,” he said. “I’d rather sacrifice a spring semester to get it done than to sacrifice a fall semester,” he added.
He said he thinks the project will be finished before the allotted time is up. “I’ve got no clout to make it happen, but I hope it is,” he said.
Vice president for finance and administration Ray Hayes also said the university hopes the project will be finished before the May 10 deadline, but it is impossible to know an exact date because of the weather and other factors.
The university has wanted to pave the McComas lot for a while, he said, and when he met with students earlier this year, they said the project was important to them.
“In fact, it was under discussion to be paved since the fall semester of last year,” Welch said.
“We were going to do it this fall, but with the beginning of the semester and the hurricane issue, we decided to delay it,” Hayes said.
Welch said that when he met with two upper-level marketing classes that are doing a marketing study for the university, the area around the McComas lot was mentioned as one of the areas that needed attention. In fact, he said, the groups determined that the area would be the best place for the first high-rise parking garage on campus, although he has not had a chance to discuss the idea with administrators.
All the projects are part of a plan to make the center of the university more pedestrian-friendly and pull vehicular traffic away from the center of campus, Hayes said.
“All the feedback that we’re getting is that this fall the vehicular traffic is much less and the pedestrians are feeling much safer and easier to move around than they did in the fall of 2004,” he said.