With the start of the construction for the new theater students lost a significant portion of the largest commuter parking lot at the end of the 2022-23 school year.
Now that everyone is back from summer break or is part of the large mass of incoming students, most of them have brought their cars along with them.
“You know there is no perfect answer, [addressing limited parking] because on the one hand, do we want to build parking lots forever and ever [and] sink your tuition dollars in the surface lots or God forbid a parking structure which is about the size or cost of classroom building? Well, that doesn’t feel great,and is that the future?” President of Colorado Mesa University [CMU] John Marshall said.
There has been a lot of construction since Marshall took office and the theater will be the third building completed in the first two years of his term.
Since Marshall’s arrival in the post-pandemic, there has been an uptick of students back on campus. With it, parking has become a prevalent issue. Especially with a rise in parking pass prices this year, each pass got around a 10% increase. These new prices were implemented as the biggest parking lot lost half of its space.
Over the break, an email was sent out alerting students that parking spaces would be significantly lower this school year. In the same email, CMU urged incoming on-campus students to leave their cars athome. The results of this suggestion will soon be seen as the year progresses.
Within his time here as president, Marshall plans on growing the campus significantly. The theater is just the beginning of his plans.
“It’s a beautiful campus with lots of trees of grass and landscaping and all that would be a parking lot […] if we followed this sort of template to its logical conclusion. Nobody wants a strip mall. We want to build a beautiful campus that is something that’s future-oriented, and that means there’s a tug and pull there with parking,” Marshall said.
There are no new plans for parking structures in CMU’s future, but Marshall and his team have acquired 100 new spots to accommodate the ones taken by the construction. Including two dirt lots nextto the hotel and an expansion of the current overfill lot across from Bunting. He does not guarantee that everyone will find a parking spot, but they are thinking of the parking situation and how to fix it.
Marshall urges students to think green and use more ergonomic strategies to get between town and campus because of the lack of parking. This includes bikes, skateboards, non-electric scooters and rollerskates.
“The city is really focused on having multiple ways for pedestrians and moving people right. One example of that would be these green scooters that showed up […] and you know, the cities also put a lot of time and energy into thinking about bike lanes. If you look around our campus, it’s a good example.”
