Expecting complaints about parking

Southeast Missouri State University will build more parking spaces on campus even if it means disrupting existing parking and tearing down houses to do it.

The university is moving ahead with plans to build two parking structures, revamp the Towers residence hall complex parking lot on Sprigg Street and tear down three houses on the west side of campus to provide more parking on the car-crowded campus.

Students routinely complain about the lack of convenient parking at the growing Cape Girardeau school, which has about 9,000 students taking classes on campus. The university's total enrollment is over 9,500, but that includes students taking classes at area higher education centers in Kennett, Malden, Sikeston and Perryville, Mo., as well as those taking classes over the Internet and studying abroad.

School officials expect more complaints once construction gets under way on a park-and-ride structure at the New Madrid Street parking lot but say in the long run it will be worth it.

"It's inconvenient, certainly," said Al Stoverink, director of facilities management at Southeast.

Students will end up having to park in the Show Me Center parking lot, adding to traffic congestion when the arena is hosting basketball games or other public events, Stoverink said.

Growing enrollment has made parking difficult because of the number of students who commute and the number of students living on campus who have cars.

'That is going to stink'

Students aren't thrilled about the prospects of construction work disrupting existing parking at the New Madrid Street lot.

"That is going to stink," said Susan Turner, a freshman from St. Louis. She lives in Towers East residence hall and has to walk several blocks to get to her car, parked on the gravel lot on New Madrid Street. The lot is known as Pig Lot, a reference to when it used to be home to the university farm.

Turner said that between commuter students and residence hall students, the lot is constantly full on weekdays. "It's always bad," she said Monday afternoon as she walked to her car.

The university is gearing up for the start this month of construction of an access road at the Pig Lot. The $600,000 project is the first phase of a proposed $12.5 million project that could be built over five years.

Nip Kelley Equipment Co. is the contractor on the first phase of the project, which is expected to be completed by spring.

A construction fence has gone up on the New Madrid Street site. The project initially affects only a couple rows of parking, which has been shifted temporarily to the Show Me Center lot, school officials said.

The park-and-ride structure would provide parking and connecting shuttle bus service. It also would include a transit office which would handle the dispatching of the buses, school officials said.

But Stoverink said the project depends on securing more federal money. Federal dollars would pay 80 percent of the cost with the university's parking and transit fund picking up the rest of the tab.

The university so far has about $2 million in federal and university funding for the project, more than enough to proceed with the access road but not enough to start building the concrete parking structure, Stoverink said.

Breaking ground Oct. 18

School officials are counting on getting the rest of the money in stages so the parking structure can be built.

They're so confident they are holding an official groundbreaking ceremony at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 18 to mark the start of the project.

The project will provide 600 parking-lot spaces and 1,200 more in the parking garage/transit facility once it is completed. But Stoverink said the initial part of the parking structure and adjoining parking lot could provide the school with 800 parking spaces within the next several years. That's about 200 more parking spaces than exist in the current parking lot.

But even that parking won't be enough.

Southeast plans to build a two-level parking garage south of the Cottonwood Treatment Center, rework the adjoining Towers complex residence halls parking lot and relocate the drive entering the lot to allow traffic to enter and exit more easily on Sprigg Street. The current exit at the top of the hill would be turned into an entrance-only road to improve traffic safety, school officials said.

The project is expected to cost over $3 million and provide an additional 280 parking spaces.

That still won't be enough.

The university's fund-raising foundation has bought three houses that will be torn down for expansion of parking lots, providing 40 to 50 more spaces. One house is on Henderson next to a parking lot across the street from the Parker Hall lot. The other two houses are at the corner of Broadway and Henderson. Tearing them down will allow for expansion of the Henderson parking lot across from the new residence hall. School officials don't have a set timetable yet for tearing down the houses, although at least one of the houses could be razed as early as this fall.

Moving cars before games

Julie Hixson, a freshman from Greenville, Mo., who lives in the new residence hall, said more parking is desperately needed.

Hixson said she and other freshmen who live in the hall must park in the gravel lot next to Houck Field House rather than the paved lot across the street. Hixson said she and other students have to move their cars before every home football game because the area is used by the university for tailgate parties.

"On game day, we have to move to the Pig Lot," she said.

The Houck parking lot gets low marks from Hixson. "There's barely enough room to drive through that lot."

Still, she said it's better than having to park in Pig Lot, which is far from most campus buildings.

"It is a terrible parking lot," Hixson said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123