Our beautiful university has grown significantly during my time here. I arrived just as the Torggler Fine Arts center was finished. I watched from the window in my Rappahannock dorm room as Shenandoah Hall, an office building on the corner of Hiden and Warwick, was built. Now, we’re all watching in anticipation as Luter II (or, the ‘Integrated Science Center, Phase III’) is finished in the heart of our campus. Unfortunately, all three of these expansions have a consistent theme that betrays one of Christopher Newport University’s biggest issues: parking.
The construction projects on campus have had a slow but noticeable impact on the parking situation at CNU. The Torggler Fine Arts center was built where there used to be a parking lot. As a result, the library parking lot is now split into a visitor lot and a faculty lot. The construction on Luter II has dramatically reduced the parking available outside of Luter, which is why the student lot outside Warwick Hall now has a dedicated faculty section (Despite the fact that faculty are already allowed to park in main campus areas!) The only construction project that increased parking was Shenandoah Hall, which created a large, faculty-only parking lot on the other side of Rappahannock.
These parking changes have been an incredible inconvenience to students and faculty alike. Because of the splitting of the library parking lot, Library and Freeman center staff are often forced to park in Ferguson center spots. Warwick, James River and Rappahannock residents have all been ticketed for parking in the new faculty parking lot outside Warwick because there are not enough parking spots in other lots. Despite the Rappahannock parking garage being almost always full, the faculty parking lot is almost always at least half empty.
I have always felt like student parking has been a secondary issue when it comes to the zoning of CNU’s parking lots. Every home football game we host an excellent tailgate, but we do so on a lot almost exclusively used by freshman and sophomore students. They are required to move their cars or be towed, and they are offered no alternative locations for parking. If they are unable to move their cars, they are towed at their own expense. CNU’s student to faculty ratio is 13 to 1, but the parking does not reflect this at all. There are only five lots available for students with a main campus parking pass, and they are all also faculty lots. There are only three lots that are available for commuter students, and all of them are also faculty parking. There are 17 lots of various sizes that are exclusively faculty parking, and there is only one lot that is exclusively for visitors.
It is no secret that CNU has had an unfortunate history regarding land use. Our university was built on land seized using eminent domain and has expanded by pressuring the surrounding homeowners to sell. These days we hesitate to expand the borders of the university (and rightly so), which means that any improvements have to be made on the land already owned by the university. This naturally leads to parking lots being developed into academic buildings, which in turn leads to a lack of parking. The development of new buildings is exciting, don’t get me wrong. I love the Torggler and I can’t wait to see Luter II finished. The issue is the recklessness with which they are developed in regards to parking and the detrimental effects it has on students. If we intend to continue the growth that this university prides itself on so much, we should do so with caution and with all members of the CNU community in mind.
