Parking plans show three new lots opening in near future
Campus parking lots fill up quickly during class hours. Jackie Torres
The long-awaited removal of Fouts Field will start in the next few years and will be replaced with new athletic facilities and more parking, Geary Robinson,director of parking and transportation, services said.
Additional parking will not be added to that side of campus until a new track and field complex is completed, which is currently in the design stage. Helen Bailey, director of facilities, planning, design and construction, said the goal is to have the complex finished by late next year, but the real timeline is uncertain.
“Once old Fouts Field comes down, we hope to get some surface parking out of that,” Robinson said. “That’s about a 6-acre footprint and in that 6-acres, we can get an additional 1000-plus cars in there.”
In addition to the 1,000 parking spots, another parking lot will be built south of Victory, David Reynolds, associate vice president of facilities, said. Reynolds said hopefully by fall of this year construction will start on this new lot.
“We’re going to build a parking lot just south of Victory Hall,” Reynolds said. “The master plan shows a residence hall and a parking lot, but what we’re going to do is build a larger parking lot.”
Robinson said the university is also considering building more parking across from Apogee Stadium.
“We’re looking at building some additional parking over at Apogee on the north side of the stadium across from Bonnie Brae, where there was talk about building a baseball stadium,” Robinson said.
If funding is approved, this proposed project is anticipated to be completed by January 2018, Robinson said.
He added the future parking lot by Victory Hall will “most likely” be for residence students. The parking lot that will replace a proposed baseball stadium will likely be for Eagle parking permits and the future Fouts Field lot will combine parking for faculty, staff and students.
Robinson said UNT is proposing to expand parking by building two more parking garages over the next 10 years. Should the construction of more parking go according to plan, the garages will add dozens of parking spots.
There is also a proposal to raise student garage rates from $450-$650 but it has not been approved as no rates have been finalized for the 2017-2018 school year.
“What we want to do is build garages to where there are also intermodal facilities so the buses can come in and leave from then have a smaller transit system circulating the campus so they don’t have the big buses running through the middle of campus,” Robinson said.
The UNT facilities department and parking and transportation services are working together on a plan for the next steps of parking. The final copy of the parking master plan will be released for public review once it goes through approval with UNT administration and the board of regents.
Students living in residence halls should be parking at the stadium or some other distant lot. Most don’t use their cars during the week, only on weekends. Eliminate all the close-in residence hall parking, turn it into Eagle parking or student parking, and get the live-in students cars away from campus where they belong. This is what much larger universities do with great success. People living in residence halls can take the bus to their cars when they need them–provide a 15 minute loading zone near the dorm so they can pack luggage for the weekend. Why make students fighting traffic take the bus to class? Stop rewarding the freshmen babies with close-in parking they don’t need.
More and smaller busses are a good idea, but parking lots next to residence halls are a waste of real estate. Let them park at the stadiums and take the bus–they don’t use their cars every day like most students do. Why should they get preferential parking spaces and WALK to class while commuters (which make up the bulk of the student body) fight traffic and are sometimes late to class because they can’t find parking? Other universities, including the ones my brothers went to and my parents went to, make residential parking off-site to make space for commuters, faculty and staff, who need to park close by. Geez, I had a professor show up late to class one day because he couldn’t find parking and had to go to Fouts Field. THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. Stop letting Freshmen dictate parking policy. Put their cars in a distant lot and open up lots closer in.