The new Hospitality and Culinary Arts Center, which began construction in May, will eliminate 264 parking spaces from campus.
“The Library lot where the construction is happening in [has] 264 spots,” said Ryan Wing, senior Sustainability analyst. “The building itself is only supposed to sit on 120 when it’s completed, but we lose the whole lot during construction.”
A temporary parking lot was added by the Quivira entrance in response to the loss of the Library lot. According to Wing, the temporary lot will stay open throughout construction of the culinary building.
“There were several locations that were looked at for the building,” he said. “The building itself got moved at least a couple of times during that planning process. Originally it was going to be on [the west] side of campus and it would have taken up fewer parking spaces, but there was a concern about visibility of the building and access to the building.”
There are no current plans to build additional parking to even out the number of spaces lost.
“Our office has made the recommendation to the administration that we not build additional parking,” Wing said. “The cost to construct another garage the size of the Galileo garage that we currently have is $17.5 million or so. Part of our concern is we don’t want that cost passed onto students in increased fees to help pay for that.”
Compiled by David Hurtado, dhurtado@jccc.edu