UNIVERSITY PARKING GARAGE SOUNDS GOOD

Parking garages at Southeast Missouri State University have been discussed before and discarded, but a suggestion by the new president of the school that a garage be built on the band practice field deserves serious consideration.

Dr. Ken Dobbins, who became president of Southeast Thursday, suggested a multilevel parking garage on the band practice field might be the answer to freeing up parking along city streets on and around the campus.

The university has commuter parking lots on the fringes of campus, but they are underutilized by students because of the distances they must walk to buildings. The university provides shuttle buses to carry students to and from the lots, but they don't carry many students who prefer to park along city streets and in Capaha Park, and the shuttle buses don't serve those areas.

The band practice field for a parking garage makes sense because it is centrally located on campus. The topography lends itself to a garage because it could be entered from the top level. The field sits at the bottom of a hill near the center of campus. Students likely would be more inclined to use it.

The university previously had talked about building a parking garage along New Madrid Street near the Student Recreation Center in conjunction with plans to build a transit way through campus for the shuttle buses. The school has secured federal funding for the transit way, but so far no money has been obtained for a parking garage.

Dobbins said federal money would be necessary to build a garage. University officials estimated in 1998 that it would cost more than $7 million to build the multilevel garage near the Student Recreation Center, and a garage on the band practice field likely would be comparable in cost.

It likely would be a number of years before a parking garage would be built. Therefore, it is important that serious thought be given to it now in conjunction with the transit way.

A parking garage coupled with the transit way might be the answer to the university's parking problems. And if enrollments increase as the university hopes, more parking space will be needed.