Thursday October 11, 2001

Transportation services lack budget to construct on lot, officials say

A Zone 1 parking lot will not close Monday as originally planned, a UA official said.

Mike Delahanty, operations manager for Parking and Transportation Services, said the 5078 parking lot, located just north of Sixth Street between North Park Avenue and East Santa Rita Avenue, will not close as anticipated, and department officials say they do not know an exact date when it will.

The construction of a parking garage and an office building for PTS was supposed to begin at the site of the lot this month. However, the project was delayed because PTS could not find a construction company to commit to the project for less than its designated budget - $13.9 million.

Andrea Graessle, senior programs coordinator for Parking and Transportation Services, said the department is seeking short-term solutions to the university's parking problem, and the 5078 lot will remain a Zone 1 parking lot.

The department will not release any permits to fill the empty spaces until it is positive the construction will not take place this semester.

Graessle said new construction bids could be approved in three weeks, and it would not be sensible to issue parking permits for that period of time.

"I do not think we should give someone a permit for only two weeks," she said. "I'd rather be undersold than have someone pay $180 and not be able to park."

Delahanty said the recent statewide budget crisis also indirectly affected the delay in construction.

"Without the budget crisis, we would have asked the Arizona Board of Regents for more money to continue the project on time," he said. "We did not even consider that an option now, and that would have been selfish of us to do so."

Graessle said the project's design was laid out, and money had already been allocated to the department's budget prior to the budget crisis.

"The project's budget had been cleared by the state and Board of Regents before the budget crisis," she said. "The construction company bids were just much higher than we had allocated our budget for earlier."

Delahanty said the department will make minor changes to the project in order to bring the bids back into its budget range.

He said that because the project is delayed, a short-term option could be to release the parking spaces that were withheld in anticipation of the parking lot closure.

Zone 1 parking spaces, located in a lot just south of Arizona Stadium at East Sixth Street and North Cherry Avenue, were not released in the beginning of the school year because they were to be filled by those students who currently park in the 5078 lot. Delahanty said he did not know how many spaces are in the lot.

"It is a viable option to open up the spaces not inventoried, at least for the rest of the semester," he said.

Patricia Victory, a management information systems senior, said she has parked in the lot south of Sixth Street and has noticed at certain times of the day that entire rows have been empty.

She said she was not aware of the closing lot and has heard complaints about the empty parking spaces.

"People always say every year, 'Why is this lot empty? Why can't I park there?'" she said.