By Aleksandra Sidorova
On-campus parking may become harder to find as one of the off-campus student parking lots closes tonight, April 19, for improvements.
Lot 27 near Banks Hall is one of the four lots closing for maintenance and updates. Two of the parking lots — Lot 9 outside of Kehoe Administration Building and Lot 28 near Champlain Valley Hall — serve faculty and staff. The last affected parking lot is Lot 10, which allows for 15-minute parking outside of Kehoe.
Lots 27 and 28 will be closed throughout the summer, according to email responses from Robert Trombley, manager of Capital Planning & Construction, and Robert Boal, assistant director of Facilities.
Reconfiguration will provide more parking spaces, chargers for electric vehicles and new sidewalks and curbs.
Lot 27 makes up 148 of the 584 parking spaces designated for off-campus students, according to Parking Manager Gail Recore. There are 1,008 active permits for off-campus student parking.
Lots 9 and 28 make up 169 of the 796 lots for faculty and staff parking that serve the 958 faculty and staff with active permits. However, neither all off-campus students nor all faculty and staff are parking on campus at any given time, Recore wrote over email.
In addition to parking lots marked for certain groups, there are 342 additional parking spaces at Sibley Hall available for all permit holders, which can help make up for the 317 total parking spaces that will be temporarily unavailable.
Lots 9 and 10 will be closed until April 26 for testing. If testing is completed earlier, the lots will open sooner, Trombley and Boal wrote. The two lots will later close again May 20 for construction to commence.
The project’s timing may be inconvenient for students and staff, but it is the best for construction considering the local climate.
“Living in the North Country, it is important for outside projects to take advantage of an early break in the weather to help maximize their efforts to complete the project in a timely manner,” Trombley and Boal wrote. “Later starts often lead to the project running into the colder months and would cause a delay in completing the work.”
Further information will be communicated to the campus when the contractor supplies a detailed schedule of the work, according to Trombley’s notice posted in the Student Digest.
“We understand the inconvenience these closures may cause and appreciate your patience and cooperation as we work to make improvements to campus,” Trombley wrote in a Student Digest listing.
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