The other day, I made my daily commute to the Colorado Mesa University (CMU) campus. As I pulled into the University Center garage, I started driving further and further to the top with multiple cars passing me along the way.
As I reached the top, I realized that these cars were not indeed leaving campus, they simply could not find parking in the garage. Like them, I too needed to turn around and find another parking lot.
I drove around to the parking lot in front of the Outdoor Program, next to Houston Hall and after making a quick lap around the parking lot, I realized that one was full too. I finally found parking at the very end of CP9 (the parking lot right behind Fine Arts and Dominguez Hall). Let me tell you, that is a lengthy walk across that parking lot to Escalante Hall.
I live 10 minutes away from campus, and if I don’t leave 30 to 45 minutes before-hand to find parking, I will be late to class. Some days I will be lucky enough to find someone backing out when I arrive, but half the time someone else decides to drive right into the spot I am waiting for and claim it for themselves.
I know some people are going to ask, “well why don’t you just use pay to park?” Well you see my dear reader, that’s because I already pay for a commuter pass. Why on earth would I pay more for just one space? Once I park my vehicle, I’m usually running around all day with work, meetings and classes, so my car will stay in one spot.
There was one week where I needed maintenance done on my vehicle and used pay to park for a week. During those four days, I racked up $50 worth of parking fees and a $20 ticket all on that one car. Why would I subject myself to that same situation?
CMU has grown significantly over the last decade. At the current moment CMU is building The Maverick Hotel, the new residence hall and a new track field.
With a growing campus, it begs the question, do we need more parking? In my personal opinion, yes, we definitely do. The problem is buying large spaces of land to demolish buildings and then pave over it is expensive. Not to mention, it takes up a lot of space.
With that being said, building parking structures is also very expensive. With parking structures, we need to take in the cost of buying the property, building multiple floors and then reinforcing them to withstand the weight of numerous vehicles.
All of that makes for a very expensive simple structure. With a growing campus, parking structures would be the better way to go. Unfortunately, the problem would be the timeline. With three projects currently going on campus, it may be awhile before more parking is added.
