The Student News Site of Utica University

The Tangerine

The Student News Site of Utica University

The Tangerine

The Student News Site of Utica University

The Tangerine

Winter parking pain

Source%3A+nbcdfw.com
Source: nbcdfw.com

Maggie Reid, Staff Writer

 

If you’re a student or a commuter with a car at Utica College, most likely at some point you or someone you know has complained about the lack of parking on campus.

Freshman Lesley Nicosia firmly believes that there is not enough parking on campus.

“I once had to park in the North Hall lot because South hall parking was full,” Nicosia said. “I feel like there should definitely be more.”

Renee Lewis, a sophomore and a commuter also felt this way.

“There are not enough parking places on campus,” Lewis said. “This is especially a problem because I commute. Sometimes I can’t find a spot and must park out of the way in the Athletic Center parking lot because that’s the only place I can find with an available space.”

Dan Bollana, executive director of facilities, has said that there is limited parking located conveniently to the academic buildings.

“If you go down to the lots across from Newman and Alumni, you will find parking, but people don’t want to walk that far,” Bollana said. “We have floated an idea to expand B lot and put it in our capital budget for next year. We will see if funding will be available. The campus has limited areas around the academic buildings for additional expansion of parking lots.”

Wayne Sullivan, director of campus safety, said that at the beginning of each semester there are parking lot surveys. Every hour, the amount of open spaces are counted to make sure that there is adequate parking.

“It’s all a matter of parking in the right places,” Sullivan said. “In the beginning of the year, there was a problem of North Hall thinking that they could park in south hall. After we sent out emails, they moved down and then there was enough room.”

Every pole on the parking lot has signs pointing to where each color can park.

“The parking lots are color-coded and easy to understand,” Sullivan said. “It’s just the matter of parking in the right places. The folks who park down at the dome for six a.m. practice are ticketed because they are not allowed to do that. The only place on campus that is really tight is South hall because there is an abnormally large number of south hall residents driving. Other than that, if people parked where they are supposed to then there will be enough parking.”

Parking in the winter can be difficult because you lose space because of the snow banks, but not to the extent that you lose a lot of parking, according to Sullivan.

“I might make recommendations this summer about Boehlert and South Hall parking and how we can fix that. We might look this summer into moving south hall parking down to open up room for Boehlert hall, because that is the only tight spot on campus. Commuters complain about parking because the residential students park in the commuter lots when driving to class, this year that hasn’t been much of an issue. We move the parking lots down to accommodate for students and staff, it’s not really a parking issue, it’s a walking issue. Boehlert/South hall is close to capacity, however everywhere else is fine.”

Leave a Comment
More to Discover

Comments (0)

All The Tangerine Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *