What about a parking garage

[techman05]

I am taking a continuing ed class at nlulm, it is not being offered right now at Tech. Anyway, they have a pretty nice tri level garage just off desiard on campus. If any of you engineers know about what goes into a project like that and what kind of cost it would involve, I would like to know. It looks like theirs provides space for about 180-200 vehicles. I wonder what it would take to build one that was 5 levels and held about 2 times that. We could build it on any one of our gravel lots.

I know it would mean a hike in parking pass costs, but hey, if nlulm can do it, I think we can.

Sorry if we have had a thread on this before, but I just saw theirs so...........

[roughedge]

Why? There's plenty of parking on campus. If the gravel lots aren't full why would we need a parking deck on one of them? Not something I'd like to see our money spent on.

[faninmonroe]

What about not.

[techman05]

Isn't the new stuff over by the engineering building supposed to take out all that parking? We are gonna need more soon.

[bdawg]

Parking has been an "issue" for years. Problem is we are generally lazy as a society. There is plenty of parking on campus. Just all of it is not located within a 5 second walk to the class you are wanting to take. Far cheaper than building a parking garage (which has significant security and safety risks) would be a shuttle system from the athletic lots that are empty for about 330 days a year. Problem remains that it takes a little planing to get on the shuttle. If the plan is the same as it was a while back, upperclassmen would have access to the closer lots, and underclassmen would have the athletic lots. That, and we would only be talking about off campus commuters, becuase all on campus residents would be restricted to lots at or near the residence halls. It will take more than a two color sticker system.

[Darbonnedawg]

400 spaces = $4,000,000. The number I have always heard is $10,000 per parking space.

[DAWG DUDE]

All I know is this morning there was not one empty parking space on campus.

[GermDawg]

No parking garage please! I would rather see Tech invest in 2-3 buses and drivers, have off-campus student park at JAS, make a loop of campus with 3 drop/pick up spots and call it a day. Can help pay for them with advertising on the buses plus would probably increase revenue since students would be more likely stay on-campus between classes and buy food and check out the bookstore.

Plus, these could be used on game days to get students from dorms and (visiting) fans from other parking areas.

[westdawg]

I have been told by sources very close to DR that are involved with the all campus construction projects that as long as DR is President, there will be no garage.

[qng001]

Isn't Caruthers/Neilson shut down, do students park there?

[JFord]

No parking garage please! I would rather see Tech invest in 2-3 buses and drivers, have off-campus student park at JAS, make a loop of campus with 3 drop/pick up spots and call it a day. Can help pay for them with advertising on the buses plus would probably increase revenue since students would be more likely stay on-campus between classes and buy food and check out the bookstore.

Plus, these could be used on game days to get students from dorms and (visiting) fans from other parking areas.

Fabulous idea.

[dawgcrazy]

No parking garage please! I would rather see Tech invest in 2-3 buses and drivers, have off-campus student park at JAS, make a loop of campus with 3 drop/pick up spots and call it a day. Can help pay for them with advertising on the buses plus would probably increase revenue since students would be more likely stay on-campus between classes and buy food and check out the bookstore.

Plus, these could be used on game days to get students from dorms and (visiting) fans from other parking areas.

A much better idea than a parking garage. No offence intended to the OP.

The median price per car (nationwide) for a parking garage is $18,100 per Means 2010, which I've found pretty accurate this year. That's $9 mil for a (small) 500 car garage. Add in security costs (only lighting is included in that figure) and additional police patrols, and it's an expensive proposition.

Ruston would likely be on the lower side of the median, but still...

[ITdrummer]

I could think of A LOT of other things to put $9M towards. Parking is fine. Just lazy students.

[inudesu]

All I know is this morning there was not one empty parking space on campus.

Isn't Caruthers/Neilson shut down, do students park there?

There was not one empty parking spot in the Hut/Cottingham parking lot? In the Neilson parking lot? At the softball field? Not one?

[DrDawg]

Hmm, I rolled in to campus this morning and found a spot right away. It is all about planning ahead. The thing that just makes me shake my head is when a student says they were late for class because they couldn't find a spot and come to find out they live on campus.