Summer 2008: Dude! Where's My Parking?

It may be summer, but the main Consortium Library parking lot has been filling up mighty fast these days, thanks in large part to a loss of about 60 spaces that have been cordoned off and are presently used as a construction staging area.

The loss of those spaces is temporary and they will be returned to the normal parking inventory before the start of the fall semester, said Michael Smith, UAA's director of Facilities, Planning and Construction. Converting those parking spots to a staging zone was necessary, Smith said, to accommodate construction of both the new 450-car parking garage in the woods north of the new Integrated Science Building and the new road to the garage and the Fine Arts parking lot just beyond it (a road that when finished will complete a loop around the garage and the Arts, Admin and Integrated Science buildings).

In addition, construction workers who have been parking in the main Consortium lot will now be parking in the Arts lot, said Stan Vanover, the senior project manager for Facilities, Planning and Construction. Vanover reminds the UAA community that free summertime parking is also available in the existing garage, west of the Social Sciences Building. On any given weekday, that garage is only about 15 percent full, Vanover said this week.

Construction of the new garage and road also has meant the temporary removal of parking for about 200 cars on the northwest side of the Arts parking lot. By fall, many of those parking spots will be reclaimed and the loss through the fall and spring semesters will be at about 130, or a third of the 400-car Arts lot, according to Facilities, Planning and Construction. To compensate for that loss, UAA planners are hoping to create a temporary parking area for about 200 cars across Providence Drive from the Wells Fargo Sports Complex, Smith said. If funding to build it is made available, that temporary parking lot will be constructed where the future 78,000-square-foot Health Sciences Building is to be erected, and shuttles will connect motorists who park there to the rest of the campus.

Construction of the new parking garage is one of 20 projects currently under way on the UAA campus, from bathroom upgrades in the Auto/Diesel Building on the west end of the campus to fire-panel upgrades in student housing on the south end, to the Integrated Science Building in the northeast corner. For a full list of the projects, together with their start and estimated finish schedule, visit http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/fpc/, the Web site of the Facilities, Planning & Construction department, and click on "2008 Summer Construction Map."