AMY WINKLER

Chemical engineering senior Sarah Perry walks through the Zone 1 parking lot north of Sixth Street between North Park Avenue and East Santa Rita Avenue. The lot will close permanently as of Oct. 15 and be made into a new parking garage.

Thursday September 27, 2001

Arizona Daily Wildcat

New parking garage, office building to be built in place of lot

A Zone 1 parking lot on campus will soon close, but students with permits will not be displaced, a university official said.

Mike Delahanty, operations manager for Parking and Transportation Services, said the 5078 lot just north of Sixth Street will close in the middle of October, but sufficient space is available south of Sixth Street for those students who have normally parked in the closing lot.

"Students have asked us why we are not issuing permits for those lots south of Sixth·it's because they were planned for use after this lot closes," he said.

The lot was not included when the department inventoried its available spaces this year, Delahanty said. It will be replaced by another parking garage and an office building that will house PTS. The office building should be completed in March.

Delahanty said the new garage - which is expected to be completed in July - will have five or six floors and 1,385 or 1,700 spaces, depending on the number of floors. He expects landscaping of the area to be finished in October.

He said the UA will build other garages in the future.

"We have other garages we're anticipating to build, and this garage will definitely help in the short run situation," he said.

Laura Wilburn, program coordinator for PTS, said the new garage will help decrease the number of students on the waiting list for parking.

Currently, a total of 7,000 Zone 1 permits have been issued and over 2,400 students are on the waiting list.

She said the waiting list for the Main Gate garage has 400 students, 600 for Park Avenue garage, 200 for Second Street garage and 600 for Tyndall Avenue garage.

Chris Leighton, parking programs coordinator for the City of Tucson's Department of Transportation, said street parking is available through the city's parking and transportation department.

He said the department has 325 total parking spaces with 250 occupied.

The permits cost $300 a year but are currently being prorated for $250. If purchased now, the permit would expire at the end of July, he said.

He said the department added 76 street parking spaces this year and will add 200 next year.

He said street parking permits are available on the north, south and west sides of campus, and that the parking stretches from south of Eighth Street to north of Lester Street and as far west as Fourth Avenue.