Parking Issues Widespread at Pitt-Greensburg

Parking at Pitt-Greensburg has been an issue so far this semester for both students and faculty. The most visible cause of this is the fenced-off construction area that’s taking up a portion of the parking lot by Cassell Hall. However, information from Joseph Bleehash, the Director of Facilities and Security here at Pitt-Greensburg suggests the construction isn’t the biggest problem.

According to Bleehash, the project has been going since Aug. 26. The team is working to replace the building’s generator with a more powerful one that was already on campus. They want to make sure that Cassell Hall’s computer lab is always online, even if there’s a power outage affecting the area. Worst case scenario, the fences will be up for approximately two months.

The fence has rendered about twenty five parking spots in the Cassell Hall lot unusable. That is a few more spots than it needs to take up, but it’s a precautionary thing. “I’d rather have two spots taken up for two months than someone’s car hit with a forklift,” Bleehash said.

Twenty five parking spots seems like a lot, especially when your class starts in ten minutes and you’ve circled the lot twice already. In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s a small portion of the school’s available parking. Bleehash says there are a total of 1210 parking spots on campus, which is more than the township requires. Even with the project, there are still almost twelve hundred parking spots on campus.

Everyone would rather have projects like this done over summer. Bleehash and his team performed $1.1 million worth of construction in just ninety days during the break, but the nature of this project demands that it be done now.

The somewhat diminished parking has not increased campus security’s policy on parking tickets. Bleehash says they are cognisant of parking issues and try to keep－for example－commuters in commuter lots.

Then there’s the issue of faculty members not using faculty spots. A commuter, Sam Nagel, witnessed a professor’s car parked in a commuter’s spot, while there were empty faculty spots around the corner. She says it’s unfair that “faculty can park in commuter lots without a ticket, but when a student parks in a faculty lot it’s the end of the world.”

Bleehash would also like to remind everyone that parking enforcement is not just for students, but faculty too.

You can follow the campus’s facilities team on twitter @UPG_facilities to get updates about projects, as well as keep an eye out for construction notifications that get posted around campus.