KEVIN KLAUS/Arizona Daily Wildcat Employees of Joe E. Woods construction company work on the Sixth Street Parking Garage on Sunday. Nearly half of the first section opened yesterday providing 337 parking spots, 413 fewer than planned.

Behind schedule, Sixth Street Parking Garage opens with more than 400 fewer spaces than planned

Three weeks after the scheduled completion of its first phase, the new Sixth Street Parking Garage is open, but has far fewer spaces than were originally planned.

Originally slated to be completed by Aug. 1 and open Aug. 12, the first section of the garage opened yesterday with only 337 spaces instead of 750.

The spaces that opened were reserved for permit holders and not for hourly visitor parking.

The elevators on the garage have also been delayed, effectively rendering disabled parking spaces above the first level unusable.

Carl Gajdorus II, Project Manager for the garage, attributes the delay to normal construction delays.

"In any construction project there are issues that arise," said Gajdorus II, also a Facilities Design and Construction senior architect.

"We are continuing to add (parking) spaces and by mid-fall it will be up to the 600-700 range," he said.

The $18.5 million, 16,000 parking-space facility ÷ which will also include a 16,700 square foot office building for Parking and Transportation Services, a plaza, CatTran shuttle stops and Sun Tran bus stops ÷ is scheduled to be completed in February.

Eventually, a greenhouse will be built on top of the garage, covering it entirely.

The garage was three weeks behind schedule in April, but since it was scheduled to be completed Aug. 1, over three weeks before school started and was expected to catch up when 24 hour work began, officials felt it would be ready.

Permit holders for the unfinished garage have been allowed to park in the Tyndall Garage and a shuttle has been provided for those students who travel east on North Fourth Street to East Highland Avenue, then back to Tyndall Garage via North Lowell Street.