Every day Crystal Hill gets to campus early, no matter what time her class starts.’ She drops her son off at preschool at 7 a.m. and then comes straight to campus to make sure she can find parking.
‘I get here around 7:30 (a.m.) and there is plenty of parking,’ said Hill, a senior child development major. ‘When I go out to my car at 9 or 10 (a.m.) there is no parking. When I get here before 8 a.m. there are plenty of parking spots. I come here early so I can get parking.’
By 2035, the student population at CSUN is expected to reach 35,000 full-time students.’ Many students, such as Hill, are either having trouble finding parking or have to completely adjust their lives to be able to park on campus.
Facilities Planning, Design and Construction are working to prepare CSUN for its projected growth. Currently, the FPDC is building a new parking structure, G3, off of Zelzah Avenue between Prairie and Dearborn streets.’ The process of building a parking structure lasts about 14 months. The G3 project began on Dec. 18, 2007 and construction is expected to be complete on Feb. 14, 2009.
Manager of Construction Services, Ken Rosenthal, said the parking structure is a post-tension cast in place parking structure. To cast-in-place means that they cast the area of the parking structure in concrete to give it its form. The floors are made by putting in posts and then creating tension to make the floors strong.
‘It’s like the top of the drum,’ Rosenthal said. ‘This process cost about $17 million and that money came from students buying parking permits. Cables that are inside the concrete decks and beams, and they stress the cables, which means they elongate them and it tightens the decks and deck floors and each floor is one week. The parking structure is built in sections in terms of the parking decks and there were 20 deck pours.’
Freshman Sean Galbraith said he thinks parking is frustrating. Like Hill, Galbraith also has to get to school early in order to find parking.
‘When I get here before 9 (a.m.), I can find parking in the parking structure,’ he said. ‘But any longer than 15 minutes after 9 (a.m.) there is no parking left. It would be nice if I could come closer to [the time] when my classes were so that I wouldn’t have that much time to try to find something to do.’
Department of Public Safety Captain Alfredo Fernandez said there will be 1,776 parking spaces in the new structure. They are trying to ensure that there will be parking throughout campus. Currently, there are two parking structures on the west side of campus and one on the east side.
‘What we’re trying to do is get the amount of spaces available to the students and staff higher every year,’ he said. ‘It’s also going to help us move some of the parking availability to both sides of campus. We’re going to try to equalize the flow and make it so that there is a more equal traffic flow on both sides of the campus.’
Galbraith said he is looking forward to the parking structure opening.
‘I think it will definitely be a good thing for the parking structure to open up,’ Galbraith said. ‘I’m hoping that it’s going to really relieve the parking stress once that opens.’
