The UA will soon start construction on a new parking garage set to replace previous parking areas that have been lost over time.
The new South Stadium parking garage will be located on Sixth Street and Warren Avenue near the Student Recreation Center. It will allocate parking spots for students and faculty in hopes of providing more efficient parking for athletic events. The garage will cost $18.5 million and will become the UA’s eighth campus parking garage.
The garage will be paid for with auxiliary funds from Parking and Transportation Services.
Construction will begin in December and is set to be completed by next August, according to David Heineking, PTS executive director.
“The new garage will have just over 900 spaces in it, and the number [we’ve] lost is somewhere around a thousand,” Heineking said.
He said the process of planning the new garage was completed by PTS staff and the office of Planning, Design and Construction.
“Just like all of the buildings on campus we work with our Planning, Design and Construction group to plan it out and get the design and they’ll ultimately work with the construction folks to get it built,” Heineking said.
The parking garage is in the UA’s Comprehensive Campus Plan, which was last updated in 2009. UA leadership noted the need for a new garage in the campus plan as a part of mixed-use development for housing and games.
Peter Dourlein, the assistant vice president of Planning, Development and Construction, said completing tasks when they are actually needed is kind of like a road map.
“Now we’re saying it’s time,” Dourlein said. “There’s been enough revenue to pay for one and we need to go ahead and do that for the convenience of our population.”
Updated after a span of five years, the plan takes into account new “influences” like the Sun Link street car implemented since the last update.
“Publicly early next year we will be beginning an update of our campus master plan,” Dourlein said. “We do that periodically usually between five to 10 years … so there’s been new influences like the street car since 2009.”
Dourlein said that UA parking has slowly diminished over time due to new campus infrastructure for residences, classrooms and an athletic field. Many of these new structures were built over former parking areas.
“The Sitton field next to the [Rec Center] was a parking lot; the Rec Center expansion a few years before that was also a parking lot,” Dourlein said.
The newer residences, Likins and Árbol de la Vida, were also parking lots in the past. The recent 151,000-square-foot Environmental and Natural Resources 2 building was also constructed on a parking area.
“It’s being located fairly close to some of the residence halls for students,” Dourlein said. “Also, fairly close to the athletics venues for game day, so it’ll serve for staff, it’ll serve for students, it’ll serve for games.”
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