Growing pains exacerbate parking space shortage

Campus construction, insufficient funding and increased growth have contributed to the lack of parking this semester according to Cindee Pulliam, director of auxiliary services. One factor contributing to the insufficient number of parking spaces is record enrollment.

According to a university press release, there are 9,807 students in attendance at UTC this fall.

Pulliam said there are 5,180 parking spaces, 1,110 of which are found at Engel Stadium. An additional 732 spaces are located at UTC Place but not included in the figure.

Pulliam said another factor making it difficult to create enough parking for all of the students at the university is that UTC is "land-locked."

"We had a study done three years ago," Pulliam said, "covering a 5 to ten year plan on parking and it basically said you need to build three garages, which would run at $15,000 per space.

"We were looking at the cost of a 500 car garage and it was running at $7.5 million. How do we fund that without everyone's decal cost going out of sight? It's difficult on an urban campus. [UTC] isn't like MTSU where there are open lots of land available for development, we've pretty much developed everything we have, we're land-locked,."

A former UTC parking lot on the corner of Houston and Vine has sat empty for nearly a year. According to Pulliam, this lot was taken back by its owner, Unum Provident, a few years ago while they plan their own employee parking services.

The university has been given the option to take part in a week-to-week or day-to-day leasing plan for that parking lot, Pulliam said.

"[The leasing plan] doesn't do UTC any good since we need the lot for a full academic year," Pulliam said.

Another factor contributing to the parking shortage is insufficient funding, she said.

According to Pulliam, parking is a self-supporting auxiliary service. No money from the state or tuition goes to parking at UTC; the money students' pay for their decals is the only money the service can use for possible resolutions that require money.

According to Pulliam, parking tags were oversold for the semester, which is nothing new to the parking system. The understanding that every student does not park at the same time fuels the decision to oversell.

"We'll never have enough parking if we're say 10,000 in students and 1,000 in faculty and staff, but then again - everyone is here from 9:30 to say 1:30 in the afternoon...and after that it's fairly open," said Pulliam.

The UTC construction boom is also negatively impacting the number of parking spaces.

Over the summer, 130 parking spaces were lost to construction, according to Pulliam, and renovations to Metro and Grote Halls have also played a part in the hunt for a space.

Despite the factors contributing to UTC's parking problems, Pulliam has discussed several possible resolutions over the years with the city and other universities.

"We're always looking at new ways to see what we can do differently and still accommodate the need," Pulliam said.

"One resolution discussed has been not allowing freshman to have cars on campus, but that's a little too hard on our campus since so many freshman are commuters or have jobs in the area," Pulliam said. "Some schools have looked at spreading their class schedule out...but I don't know how that would work with academic scheduling and students that work."

John van Winkle, city traffic engineer, said that a traffic and parking study needs to be done by campus administration.

Despite the university's efforts to appease the students, the parking issue remains heated amongst the campus population.

Malia Hinson, a Clarksville, Tenn., junior, said, "It's ridiculous, if the school is obviously growing, then parking needs to grow with it... I want to know what the money students pay for tags goes to and I want to see what plans for improvement are coming from that money."

Marc Stockman, a Chattanooga senior, said, "I just don't park on campus anymore, there's nowhere to park. I just walk and don't have to deal with getting a ticket for double-parking when one fourth of my wheel is over an imaginary line in a gravel lot with no lines.