Two parking garages to be built at SEMO

Southeast Missouri State University will build two, two-story parking garages and hike parking fees to pay for it.

The Board of Regents on Friday approved the $6.5 million project, which school officials said will help relieve parking problems.

The university will build a 364-space parking garage on Henderson Street north of Broadway next year and a 340-space structure on Sprigg Street near the Towers residence halls in 2003.

Regents said the garages would help address the lack of parking on campus. Many students currently park on city streets, they said.

"I think the most exasperating thing is when you have a car and no place to park it," said regent Sandra Moore. Moore said the result is parking tickets that often get mailed to parents to pay.

Preferred parking permits will increase to $135 a year, up from $80 this school year. Perimeter parking permits will cost $85, up from $45. Evening-class parking decals will cost $45, up from $25.

Dr. Pauline Fox, vice president of administration and enrollment management, said low interest rates allow the university to issue bonds without having to hike parking fees so much that it would drive away students.

Fox said the university needs added parking to deal with growing enrollment.

She said the two new parking garages, plus construction of the first phase of a federally funded park-and-ride structure on New Madrid Street within the next two years, could go a long way toward improving parking.

The park-and-ride structure eventually could provide 1,500 parking spaces, Fox said.

Students like Ross McFerron, vice president of Student Government, say they don't mind paying higher parking fees if there is ample parking.

"If there's anything on campus that students are probably willing to pay for, it's parking," he said prior to the regents meeting.

In other action Friday, the regents formally revoked the charter for the Garden School in St. Louis because the neighborhood organization had been unable to secure a building and financing to operate an elementary and middle school by the board-imposed deadline.

The regents in September 2000 approved a five-year charter for the group to open a school the organization wanted to establish in the Missouri Botanical Garden neighborhood.

University officials had expected the school to open this fall. When it didn't, the regents demanded that the Garden School group secure a building and sufficient financing by Oct. 15. The group couldn't meet the deadline.

Charter schools are taxpayer-funded public schools that operate independently of established school districts and elected boards. State law only allows charter schools in the Kansas City and St. Louis school districts, and then only if they are chartered by specific universities or those two school districts.

Southeast already charters one school, the Lift for Life Academy in St. Louis, a middle school that began operating last year.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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