Volume 44, Issue 14. Today is
MCC to begin 20-year plan with parking improvements
Mesa Community College students will have more parking next fall now that administrators have approved construction of a new lot on the east side of campus.
The new parking is the first stage of a 20-year plan to expand campus facilities that is designed to create more efficient vehicle access around campus as well as making room for a new physical science building.
“We will be losing 214 spaces in the employee Lot K for the new physical science building,” said Capt. Lynn Bray, the acting director of Public Safety.
He explained that the old student Lot I on the south side of MCC is becoming the new employee lot.
To make up for the loss of spaces, MCC is planning to replace the tennis courts with more parking.
Lot D on the southeast side of campus will be gaining approximately 124 spaces, and northeast parking lot C is gaining 100 spaces for students to park.
“We hope to have the first stage of the parking lot project completed before the end of the summer,” explained Bray.
Because certain parking lots around MCC receive a high volume of students and teachers searching for a spot to park, the main goal of the construction will be to ease congestion by having the lots connect around the entire college grounds into a c-shaped parking lot network that will make more spaces available to all people during peak traffic hours.
“New people are parking in the lots everyday,” according to Kalena Kewanwytewa who issues parking permits in the Kirk Center.
“On a busy day at student services, at least 23 people come to register their cars. These students are usually new to campus or have never registered their cars at school.”
A survey of 40 randomly selected cars in the MCC parking lot showed only 21 out of 40 cars had a parking sticker. MCC student Elena Perez drives without a parking sticker.
She said she didn’t have a car when she started school, but since getting a car she has never been ticketed for parking on campus without a sticker.
Bray said the unregistered-cars dilemma at MCC is an unlikely contributor to the limited parking.
Quoting former President Larry Christiansen, Bray said, “We have a parking inconvenience here at MCC, but not a parking problem.”
The students who have not registered are not particularly at risk, according to Bray, because all of the visitors at school are allowed to park anywhere.
“We won’t write a citation unless the unregistered car is violating a different offense such as parking in the fire lane, or illegally parking in a disabled parking space,” Bray said.