As of Feb. 1, students who usually park on the west side of the center island of the Ownby Parking Lot, located between Westcott Field and McElvaney Hall, have had to park elsewhere because their parking lot will be closed due to construction. (Repairs are being made to the pavement that was damaged when a new waterline was installed in early December.)
The construction project began Monday and is expected to be finished within 10 days.
Parking: The issue has been beaten to death. You grumble about it in the morning, talk about it with your friends and complain about it with just about anyone who will listen.
But if a student has found a convenient place to park every day and is suddenly forced to move, it’s not so easy to find a spot. Moody and Airline fill up quickly in the morning, making parking there almost impossible after 11 a.m.
Gary Schultz suggested to Ed Board that those inconvenienced students could park in the Dedman lot, which is all-university parking.
It would be one thing for the parking shortage to be caused by construction of a new parking garage that benefits us all. But pavement repairs, while necessary, seem like a little thing that is inconveniencing a big number of people.
It would help if students were kept better-informed about what’s going on. Yes, we get an e-mail telling us to move our cars and for how long. But we’d feel better about it if we knew why.
Schultz informed Ed Board that construction updates can be followed at smu.edu/construction. He also said that the site will be updated by next Monday with the most recent information.
Knowledge about campus improvements is information any active student should have. We’d be willing to bet that a few students don’t even know the name of the new J. Lindsay Embrey engineering building that opened its doors for the first time in September, much less that it’s a “green” building.
We hear about construction of a new parking structure. We hear about the installation of a crosswalk on Daniel. We hear about a lot of improvement projects at SMU-but it’s just that: hearsay. We have yet to see any of these projects begin.
Schultz told us that the two main construction projects now underway are the basketball center and the parking garage on Binkley west of Airline. The new parking garage will be where Letterman Hall and the old Lambda Chi and SAE houses were. The garage will have 850 spaces and will be completed later this year.
Knowing what we’re paying for, what we’re in for and how it will affect us would make students’ attitudes about moving their cars a lot better.
