Some students may find it difficult to locate a parking spot on Monday morning when the fall semester begins, because the university’s overflow parking location has changed at virtually the last minute.
Parking at the Stokes Elementary School lot, which previously was used for university overflow parking, will be significantly limited this year, Lipscomb announced in an email Thursday evening.
“That school is still owned by Metro Schools. It’s their property, and they just didn’t want to lease it to us anymore,” said Kim Chaudoin, director of University Communication and Marketing. She sent out the emails announcing the changes to students and faculty.
“Maybe someday it will become available again. It’s just not right now. We don’t really know what they have planned. We just know that it’s not available to us anymore.”
Overflow parking will now be located at the Lipscomb Academy high school football field lot at Caldwell and Lealand lanes.
“In the simplest terms, if it were this easy, you’re kind of taking what’s at one lot and moving it, still on the north end of campus, but moving it down and parking at the high school field,” Chaudoin said. “It’s not really that simple, but that’s kind of what the problem is that we’re trying to resolve.”
According to Chaudoin, the loss of parking at Stokes was made official “just within the last few days.”
“I think negotiations have been going on over the last few weeks, and I think it’s just, the final answer is ‘no,’” she said. “I know this week we’ve been working very hard on figuring something out, getting the shuttles all lined up. Very recent… it would have been nice if we had had a little more advance warning, but these things happen when they do.”
Patrick Cameron, assistant director of daily operations and special events, said the university was previously allotted 300-350 parking spots at Stokes, and there were consistently 250-300 people parking in that area. Now, the university will be permitted to use any paved areas, an estimated 75-100 spots, at Stokes for parking. The high school football field has 329 spots. On campus, there are about 1,860 spots available for university use.
According to Matt Rehbein, director of institutional research at Lipscomb, last fall’s enrollment was 4,010 (2,675 undergraduate and 1,335 graduate). Full-time faculty members last fall numbered 169, while there were 256 part-time faculty. Numbers for fall 2012 are not yet available.
Chaudoin said the university is working to find more surface parking on campus by moving equipment and other things that may be blocking parking sports. She also said the university is “looking at some options to the north side of campus to get more surface parking, but right now they’re not really sure what that looks like or when. But I would anticipate that coming during this semester.”
For now, shuttles will pick up people who park at the high school football field and drop them off at the Allen Arena shuttle stop. The shuttles will run every 15 minutes during peak times (7-8:30 a.m. and 4:30-5:30 p.m.) and every 30 minutes during other hours.
Chaudoin emphasized that shuttles will leave at the scheduled time and no sooner, “that way you can plan accordingly.”
High school football field parking
“I think people are leery of the whole shuttle system, and I think sometimes that has been due to the fact that the shuttle (has in the past) not adhered to a really strict schedule,” she said. “We’ve posted a schedule online. This is what we’re going to look at next week and see what we need to tweak, see if we need to add pick up times, things like that.”
The new parking setup may mean guests who come to campus for events will need to use shuttles also, Chaudoin said.
“Of course, we have challenges on days when there are events. We’re looking at different alternatives for people who are coming to campus for events because that does overload our parking capacity. They might be shuttled as well.”
Students already are looking at the potential impact.
Rachel McAngus, an accounting major from Eagle River, Alaska, said she’s never had to park at Stokes but still recognizes the need for more space.
“I’ve been fortunate enough that that’s never happened,” she said. “I think parking has always been an issue, but I know making parking lots is expensive. A parking garage would be really helpful, but apparently that costs an obscene amount of money. I don’t know if they could do anything to fix it, but there’s obviously not enough parking for everybody.”
Kathy Short, a junior from Indianapolis, Ind., said she thinks the sudden change in parking “is a big inconvenience for a lot of students, especially with the new nursing building and engineering building we have over there,” near Stokes.
“Stokes was great for overflow parking,” the math education major said. “With the shuttle bus, I feel like college students tend to run late. Not everything is scheduled out and planned perfectly, so that might inconvenience some people. It might make you late to class.”
In the future, Short said she thinks the university should work on making more parking available near each new structure that is developed.
“I don’t think they plan their parking very well when they build buildings,” she said. “Plan more appropriately when building new buildings; plan for appropriate parking for those buildings.”
Katie McNutt, a junior in communication and public relations from Chicago, said the parking changes will likely affect her.
“This year it’ll be interesting because it’ll be the first year I’ve lived off campus, so I’ll have to deal with that,” she said, adding that she doesn’t understand why the university can’t use the Stokes lot. “I thought it was a little bit ridiculous. I don’t understand why we can’t use all that parking. I would like to know the reasoning behind that.
Stokes Elementary School
“Parking, in general, is already a pretty big hassle especially for commuter students, but I think Lipscomb is doing everything they can,” she said, emphasizing that she thinks the shuttle will be a good aspect to the new system.
McNutt said parking might be improved if the university created a system that would indicate the amount of parking available at each lot.
“To have some indication at the beginning of each entrance to how many spots are available so that students know whether it’s even worth it try… it just means they would waste less time searching for a spot,” she said.
Necessary changes will be made in upcoming weeks, as the university makes assessments of the parking situation, Chaudoin said.
She said the administration will be looking “to see what they can do to alleviate the problem.”
“We really won’t know the extent of it until next week comes and we see what our enrollment is and where some of the points of pain are. Hopefully next week we’ll be discovering some of that.”
Chaudoin said she thinks the parking troubles may be limited to this fall semester.
“We really anticipate this as only a fall issue,” she said. “I know that doesn’t seem to really make since, but with spring, you have a big graduating class in December, generally, and the number of new students that start in January is not nearly what it is in August. That just seems to be the ebb and flow of an academic year. So, we think that the attrition will be enough that, it really shouldn’t be a problem. And at the point, we’ve found some other solutions on campus for surface parking and things like that.”
Until then, Chaudoin acknowledged that finding parking can be inconvenient and “we always appreciate everybody’s cooperation and patience.”
“We know our students especially have been very cooperative. I know it gets frustrating sometime. We’re trying to come up with a better solution.”
Chaudoin suggested that students who wish to share concerns about parking may reply to the email she sent, contact Security and Safety or talk with someone in the Campus Life office.