Growing pains exacerbate parking space shortage
Lance Lauda
Issue date: 9/11/08 Section: News
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One factor contributing to the insufficient number of parking spaces is record enrollment.
According to a university press release, there are 9,807 students in attendance at UTC this fall.
Pulliam said there are 5,180 parking spaces, 1,110 of which are found at Engel Stadium. An additional 732 spaces are located at UTC Place but not included in the figure.
Pulliam said another factor making it difficult to create enough parking for all of the students at the university is that UTC is "land-locked."
"We had a study done three years ago," Pulliam said, "covering a 5 to ten year plan on parking and it basically said you need to build three garages, which would run at $15,000 per space.
"We were looking at the cost of a 500 car garage and it was running at $7.5 million. How do we fund that without everyone's decal cost going out of sight? It's difficult on an urban campus. [UTC] isn't like MTSU where there are open lots of land available for development, we've pretty much developed everything we have, we're land-locked,."
A former UTC parking lot on the corner of Houston and Vine has sat empty for nearly a year. According to Pulliam, this lot was taken back by its owner, Unum Provident, a few years ago while they plan their own employee parking services.
The university has been given the option to take part in a week-to-week or day-to-day leasing plan for that parking lot, Pulliam said.
"[The leasing plan] doesn't do UTC any good since we need the lot for a full academic year," Pulliam said.
Another factor contributing to the parking shortage is insufficient funding, she said.
According to Pulliam, parking is a self-supporting auxiliary service. No money from the state or tuition goes to parking at UTC; the money students' pay for their decals is the only money the service can use for possible resolutions that require money.
