Allison Roberts, Managing editor
Brittani Young, Staff writer
Construction north of Morrison Hall on the loop and around the Fine Arts Building should be completed by Oct. 15, Director of the Physical Plant Eddie Harbin said.
The construction has eliminated the availability of parking around the loop until it is completed, but the ongoing projects are intended to create easier parking and movement around campus for students, faculty and staff with disabilities.
“For every person using that area, it should be much nicer,” said Vice President of Student Affairs Sharon Robinson.
With the addition of 12 new handicapped parking spaces closer to the northeast and northwest entrances of Morrison Hall, there will no longer be regular parking available in the loop once construction is completed.
Robinson explained that while the existing handicapped parking spaces met the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, they were not at the level of accessibility that Southeastern’s ADA Committee deemed necessary.
The plans to construct new, more fully accessible handicapped parking spaces have been in the works for several years, Robinson said. She added, “Our ADA committee has been interested in being able to take people from the lots to the campus in as seamless a way as they can.”
Director of Student Support Services Susan Dodson added that another issue prompting the change in parking accessibility at this time is the upcoming relocation of the Academic Advising and Outreach Center. The new location of the advising center will be the old bookstore near the north side of Hallie McKinney. The construction for the move should be complete by Sept. 30, Harbin said.
Dodson said that it is “another place that’s going to have heavy traffic that didn’t have a lot of accessible parking” for people with disabilities. The new ADA parking spaces should help with that issue.
The handicapped parking spaces made available by Morrison Hall will eliminate the non-handicapped spaces in front of the Fine Arts Building and the University Center. However, several of the visitor parking spaces closest to the entrance and exit of the loop will still remain, according to Robinson.
In the meantime, to accommodate campus community members with disabilities, Robinson said that they have added several temporary handicapped parking spaces to various parking lots on campus, including those for the Math, Fine Arts and Administration buildings.
If any students, faculty or staff members are having issues finding a handicapped parking space close enough to their destinations, Robinson said they should contact her about it.
Last year, to help alleviate the handicapped parking issues, Robinson said the school created yellow tag special permit parking “as a stopgap,” a temporary measure, issued to eight “people with mobility needs.”
“This project represents for me one of the last real barriers that we had with parking that we really needed to address, so I feel very good about the project,” Robinson said.
“I feel very excited that we’ve addressed it and we are serving our students, faculty, staff and community in a way that should better meet their needs.”
She also acknowledged the difficulty of maneuvering around the construction that those on campus are experiencing this fall.
“I don’t think any of us would say the timing for this is exactly perfect,” Robinson said. “It’s a challenge right now, and I understand that, but we are working as fast as we can.”
Southeastern is trying to be ahead in preparation as more students with disabilities attend the school, “which I think is a wonderful thing,” Dodson said. “We’re excited about it.”
In further efforts to accommodate everyone on campus, Harbin said construction between Fine Arts and the Russell Building “will improve drainage and landscaping/irrigation to that area” and will add “an ADA ramp from the lot north of Fine Arts connecting that lot and the loop with an ADA accessible route.”
Plyler Construction, the contractor and construction management company building the ADA parking spaces, is also in charge of this portion of campus construction, Harbin said.
Robinson explained that when it rains, there has always been a pool of water by the east entrance of Fine Arts.
Southeastern already has a ramp that extends from the Fine Arts lot to the main part of campus but Robinson said, “It wasn’t the optimum under ADA code.”
Being built currently is a switchback ramp, which slopes for a short distance, is completely flat and then slightly slopes again toward the opposite direction. Robinson said the purpose of this type of ramp is “to take a great slope and make it manageable.”
Of the construction efforts as a whole, Robinson said, “I think we’ve made a lot of really good changes for everyone on our campus, and we’ll continue to be vigilant in those efforts.”
News, September 6, 2012