ISU Bengal

Issue date: 3/28/07 Section: News

Media Credit: ISU Public Safety

For years, students have come before the Associated Students of ISU (ASISU) Senate and complained about the alleged parking problems at ISU. With the construction of the Rendezvous Center, parking is again a controversial issue. According to two ISU officials, the problem is not necessarily with space, but simply a matter of convenience.

The Rendezvous Center will contain roughly 300 new beds for ISU Housing, as well as classrooms and food services. Originally the plan was to build parking underneath the building, but rising costs made that idea impossible.

Scott Campbell, Director of Campus Planning, said that there are a lot of concerns with parking in the vicinity of the Center and they identified a couple of locations where parking structures could possibly go. One would be the RFC parking lot, and the other would be in Cadet Field west of the Center. The cost of building those structures ranges from $15,000 to $25,000 a parking space.

"In order to afford 300 new parking spaces, the structure would cost around $7 million," said Campbell.

According to some estimates, in order to pay for the structure off of spots that would have parking meters paid by the hour, 60% of the parking garage would have to be filled 16 hours a day.

In order to pay for parking with parking permits, parking permit costs would have to increase to about $125 a year, according to Steve Chatterton, Director of Public Safety at ISU.

"One of the problems with Boise State's first parking structure was that they didn't have enough students who were willing to pay the cost to park in the structure," said Chatterton.

With a parking structure being out of the question for ISU at this time, Campbell stated that they have started looking at expanding existing parking lots; what Campbell called 'enhanced parking.' Essentially, it calls for re-striping existing parking lots and taking out concrete barriers. For example, the Owen/Redfield parking lot behind the Tennis Center of Reed Gym could be remodeled and re-striped for about $5,000, adding 77 parking spaces there.

Looking at the map, the different areas where Campbell and others at ISU are looking at putting in new parking can be seen. Some areas are more expensive, requiring retaining walls to be built. Most of the parking would be general or housing parking, but some would be metered. For example, when Red Hill Road re-opens following the completion of the Center, there is an idea that it would become a one-way road, with 33 new spaces alongside it. Those spaces could be metered parking, more expensive than our current meters.

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