Some of the best compliments to our campus are its beautiful scenery, the architecture of its buildings and its well-maintained expanses of green fields.
Well, everywhere except where all the East Campus environmental buildings are. This view is already cluttered with classrooms and may have yet another eyesore: the Board of Trustees is considering paving over the only field left on East Campus.
They’ve been forced by the California Coastal Commission to confront the parking situation in order to begin construction on a building for the School of Media Arts. The five-story parking structure option should be avoided at all cost.
Though securing the Leadbetter parking lot was a step in the right direction, campus bigwigs should look even harder for parking alternatives, and student and faculty should enthusiastically support whatever measures they might create.
For the last couple of years, City College has sold subsidized harbor parking stickers, reducing the $65 price tag to $30 for students and free for faculty. Students and faculty are then allowed to park campus lots eight weeks into the semester.
The Harbor pass alternative is still available, though they are no longer sold at reduced cost according to Joe Sullivan, City College vice president of Business Services.
There were 300 harbor passes allotted to students each year, no more than 188 were ever sold. Another tactic would be to draw some students away from campus altogether. Conducting courses like auto shop or welding at off campus faculties would be at start. Another would be to push online classes with a campaign targeting working students as well as students with dependents.
Each option alone would be ineffective. They might just do the trick if used in concert with existing efforts.
If, however, the Commission corners administrators into building the parking garage, they should work with the city to build it in the Pershing Park lot.
It would not be seen from campus and the sides facing the park and Castillo could be obscured with well-placed trees and shrubbery. Though some students would invariably grouse about the short walk up the adjacent hill, none of the precious campus landscape would suffer.
Regardless, kudos to anyone who uses alternative forms of transportation to get to school and to Sullivan’s predecessor Brian Fahnestock, who brokered to harbor parking deal. It is just that sort of proactive approaches that will ultimately save the beauty of this campus.