Thank you! Thank you for your patience and cooperation as the college begins work on a long-planned and awaited parking structure.

The parking structure project will provide a 1,100 car garage and add approximately 850 new parking spaces. It will also add an elevator to move students from the structure to the upper campus in the area of the Student Center.

In addition, the college is funding a widening of Mountain Street that will result in dedicated right and left turn lanes into the parking structure as well as a signal to make entering and exiting the parking structure and parking lot safer.

Construction of these improvements will take approximately 15 months and our goal is to have the structure open for Fall 2007.
In order to minimize the impact of the construction, which has resulted in the loss of approximately 350 parking spaces in Lot B, the college is offering stacked parking in all college and city lots with the exception of Lot 33 in Verdugo Park.

Stacked parking is a method for getting the most out of our parking lots by allowing parking attendants to park cars in the aisles. The college has been successfully using this method of parking in Lot 30 for several years.

In addition, the college is returning Lot 32 to student parking displacing approximately 125 employees who have been parking in the lot since the closure of Lot F (North Science parking lot) and Lot G (Facilities parking lot) due to construction of the Parikh Health Sciences Building.

To accommodate these employees the college has moved approximately 125 classified staff and managers to several off site parking lots. These employees are shuttled to the college. While this move has created a great deal of inconvenience to our valuable staff, it was considered critical by the administration and Board of Trustees that your education not be disrupted.

All in all, these temporary changes in parking have added parking spaces for students.

Moreover, the use of stacked parking means students don’t have to sit and wait for a parking space to open up, which often resulted in being late to class.

Now, a student can leave their car, and keys, with an attendant. (It is a good idea to have your car key on a separate key ring.)

Additionally, I have heard from a number of students who were unhappy about the lack of adequate notification concerning the change in parking. I have no excuse to offer, we simply dropped the ball. Please accept my apology.

Again, thank you for your cooperation.

— Lawrence R. Serot
Vice President, Administrative Services