Taylor is building a new parking lot west of the Facilities Building, exclusively for freshman use.
It will provide 340 parking spaces, Keith Cocking, director of construction services, said. The lot will be finished by early fall, before freshmen bring cars onto campus.
The new parking lot ensures freshmen can keep their cars on campus.
While the lot’s cost is still being finalized, Cocking said, it will cost between $1.5 and $2 million. The average cost per parking space will be between $5,000 and 6,000.
The parking lot will be paid for by a rise in the price of parking passes. Next year, passes will cost $150, a 100% price increase from the current price of $75.
The raising of pass prices will continue for the next three years. The final price is unknown, but will likely be around $200, Nikky Potter, student body vice president, said. The next two years’ price increase will be around $25.
“Most of Taylor’s funding, when it comes to projects, comes through either large-scale campaigns such as the Chapel Initiative, or through donations that are for a specific purpose from generous donors,” Hoover said. “The parking lot doesn’t fit into any of those categories, so the wisest way the university can raise funds for the lot is to increase the student pass price.”
The choice is an honest one, Potter said. The university chose to be upfront about their decision to raise prices instead of hiding it in the tuition bill or in extra fees.
Funding will also cover safety measures, due to the lot’s distance from the center of campus.
“Because that’s a little bit more of a rural part of campus, right now, they are making sure that students will feel safe travelling from that side of campus back toward the residential end,” Potter said. “The plan right now is to have some emergency call stations that would contact police. And it will be extremely well-lit and paved, so it won’t be as creepy.”
The lot's location, past Randall and near the proposed new track, is due to the size of the parking lot. That location is the only place on campus that can accommodate the size necessary for the new parking spaces without needing to demolish anything else, Cocking said.
The building project is a result of a student survey initiated by Chris Jones and Taylor Student Organization, said Michael Hoover, student body president. The Taylor administration, aware of a need for additional parking, had reached out to TSO to seek student feedback.
“We were involved in the ideation process of, like, how do we best communicate out to students,” Hoover said. “And the survey had a few different options of parking and pass options that students could vote on.”
The options, Hoover said, included either building a new parking lot or changing the parking pass distribution system.
The survey received over 250 responses, Hoover said. Most respondents called for a new lot, instead of restricting parking passes to juniors and seniors.
“We still want freshmen to have their cars on campus,” Hoover said. “So, next year, this lot that’s being built will be a freshman-only parking lot. So that allows freshmen to have cars on campus but removes some of the pressure from all the other parking lots that are closer to buildings, closer to the dorms.”
Still, freshmen will only be allowed to have cars on campus after Thanksgiving.
The police department then verified the need for a parking lot, Mike Spaulding, chief of police, said. Officers conducted surveys and counted available lots around campus to gauge the number of parking spaces needed.
Michael Kinder and Son will build the lot, he said, the same construction company building the new chapel and track.
“It makes sense for them to do the parking lot because there are people already out there working on it,” Cocking said. “They’ll have a couple different subcontractors who will do the different phases of work for the parking lot itself. Someone will do the earth work, someone will do the paving, someone will do stormwater piping and drainage.”
For those interested in the subject, there will be an opportunity to learn about future Taylor projects towards the end of April that will provide additional information, Potter said. Students are encouraged to attend and ask questions about the parking lot or any other building projects on campus.
