Physical plant provides additional parking
With enrollment at record highs, the University of Indianapolis is trying to battle some of the fallout by adding more parking to accommodate students.
After losing the parking east of Lilly Hall due to construction of the new Student Athletics and Recreation Center, everyone had to try to squeeze in a little bit more around campus and then parking became an issue.
“It took me forever to find a parking spot,” freshman Kyndal Greig said. “I still ended up having to park on the street .”
As the school year began, UIndy decided to add two parking lots.
One of the lots is located on the corner of Matthews Street and Hanna Avenue and the other is at the corner of Castle Street and Matthews Street. Both lots are east of Warren Hall.
Director of the Physical Plant Ken Piepenbrink said that building the new lots was a time consuming process that took a thorough planning process from the university .
“Parking, as everything else, has to be zoned right,” Piepenbrink said. “You can buy all the land you want, but if it’s not zoned correctly, it could cause major issues within the state and a major fine.”
According to Piepenbrink, getting the correct zoning is a time consuming endeavor that can hold up the building process.
“We agreed to wait, because UIndy wanted to see exactly how many students they were going to have before they added the spots,” Piepenbrink said.
According to Piepenbrink, after getting the parking lots zoned, finishing the parking lots was not as easy as planned.
“It cost $3,000 for each direct asphalt spot that was put into each lot,” Piepenbrink said. “Each lot averages about ninety spots. If you add up the cost based on the average number of spots, each lot cost about $270,000 that comes straight out of University of Indianapolis funds. Many talked about opening up a parking garage, but that would cost $10,000 plus the amount of each individual parking spot, money the university didn’t necessarily have to spend on parking.”
There is also the issue of illegal parking.
“Students didn’t want to walk to get to their class, so they would park somewhere illegal because it was more convenient for them,” Piepenbrink said. “Then there would be tickets given out.”
However, there are other options for places to park, such as the new gravel lot next to the Fifth Third bank and at the music annex.
Piepenbrink said that the hopes behind adding the parking lots are that more students will park there, freeing up spots by the dorms for on-campus students and commuters will be able to park legally.
Although there are not exact numbers for totals this year, last year alone there were over 6,000 cars registered and only 2,195 parking spots available, according to the Police Department’s records.
“I think the new parking spots have helped out at least a little bit,” freshman Julia Houck said. “When I came to visit last year, it took my family forever to find a parking spot.”
Piepenbrink said that although the additional parking may not completely rectify the problem, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
