Jesse Medina
The Paw Print
Parking is continuing to be a concern at Adams State College.
The continuing renovations are causing the already troublesome parking for students, faculty, and neighborhood residences alike to become even more inadequate.
The closing down of Richardson Avenue for the new face lift for the E.S Building is the latest in renovations that has caused a great deal of distress amongst those attempting to park at Adams State College.
Most everyone on or around the campus is familiar with the rush of renovating construction that has been occurring here on the Adams State College campus. The new stadiums, as well as the renovations of Plachy Hall and the Rex Activity Center, are just some of the renovations that are affecting parking.
With the campus in disarray, parking has become difficult to manage. Dr. Joel Shults, Chief of Campus Police, feels that, all and all, the parking is not much worse than it could be. According to Dr. Shults, the availability of parking on campus is in a “state of flux” as construction continues.
Part of the parking upheaval is the flood of students who are now forced to park out in the surrounding residential areas. This is causing concern and some anger from residents who are upset about students parking in front of their houses.
Dr. Shults does recognize that the new additions of the parking lot on the west side of the library has helped but, at the same time, feels that the reduction of stadium parking has hurt the parking situation.
“There has been a net increase of on-campus parking, but we are losing street parking,” says Dr. Shults.
The Richardson Avenue parking addition has yet to be started, the reason for this being the current renovation of the E.S. Building.
With the lack of parking available to students and faculty, the concurrent rise of parking violations would be expected. This is not necessarily the case. Most violations, according to Dr. Shults are the result of time expiring for the parking space.
At one time Adams State College had zoned parking. With the increase of the student population and therefore automobiles, zoned parking has been the chosen route with the administration.
Dr. Shults says that some parking restrictions may be on the way. The parking lot between the
Student Union Building and Coronado Hall on Monterey Avenue is, more than likely, going to be divided between student residential parking and visitor parking.
Visitor parking has also been a tough situation. As limited as parking is, visitor parking spaces are the spaces at a minimum. The spaces that will be made available by splitting the Monterey Avenue parking lot in half will help provide more visitor spaces. The downside would be the reduction of Coronado residences parking spaces.
Dr. Shults provides these suggestions for avoiding parking violations during this time of construction at Adams State College, “Plan ahead. Try to leave early or plan to use some alternate form of transportation.”
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