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The arrival of the fall semester means an influx of hundreds of new students circling the parking lots on the University of North Georgia (¹û¶³´«Ã½) campuses looking for that elusive parking spot. ¹û¶³´«Ã½ students, faculty and staff will experience improvements on the Dahlonega Campus with the Aug. 1 opening of the new South Parking Deck, located in the Owen Hall, Liberty Hall, and Patriot Hall residential areas, with access from Alumni Drive.

The $9.1 million project has been in the planning and development stages for more than three years, with construction beginning in December 2016. The new parking deck was funded by student fees, Auxiliary Services reserve funds, future faculty and staff parking fees, and a contribution from the ¹û¶³´«Ã½ Real Estate Foundation.

"The new South Deck will feature 526 parking spaces on four levels in very close proximity to residence halls, the soon-to-open Convocation Center, the Library and Technology Center, and the central campus," said DeEnna Walters, executive director of auxiliary and related units at ¹û¶³´«Ã½. "With the South Deck, and the surface parking that will be returned with the opening of the Convocation Center, the Dahlonega Campus will have more than  5,100 parking spaces, of which more than  900 have been added over the last three years."

Other measures ¹û¶³´«Ã½ Parking & Transportation Services have introduced to alleviate parking on ¹û¶³´«Ã½'s Dahlonega Campus in recent years include a campus shuttle, improved maps and signage, and a parking app to improve access, information, and traffic circulation around campus.

"We are very excited about the opening of the South Deck in August," said Mac McConnell, ¹û¶³´«Ã½ senior vice president of business and finance. "This project was conceived with great assistance from the university’s partners in the University System of Georgia’s offices of planning and finance, and is a key element of achieving ¹û¶³´«Ã½’s vision for providing large scale parking that is central to campus and is easily accessible. This facility will also give ¹û¶³´«Ã½ and our visitors an excellent parking and access point for the Convocation Center that is unmatched by our peer institutions." 

McConnell also expressed gratitude to the project manager, Jones Lang LaSalle, the design team at Lyman, Davidson and Dooley, and Choate Construction for delivering the project on-time and on-budget.

¹û¶³´«Ã½'s Gainesville Campus will test a parking initiative in the fall to improve parking by reducing the number of cars that park on campus. A new ride-sharing program will offer about 100 parking spaces to vehicles with two or more occupants in lots close to the Student Center and the Nesbitt Building. ¹û¶³´«Ã½'s Gainesville Campus has experienced significant investments in parking infrastructure, with more than 900 parking spaces and a campus shuttle created over the last three years.

"We hope that students, faculty and staff will take advantage of these well-located parking lots and ride share to campus," said Richard Oates, vice president of the Gainesville Campus. "If more students and others will join a friend, old or new, and commute to campus together the benefits to everyone will be significant – preservation of campus green space, improved socialization, and less environmental impact plus a better parking spaces."

Oates said the Gainesville Campus has added a significant amount of parking recently, and will add hundreds of new spaces in 2019 with the Lanier Tech campus acquisition.

Improvements are also in the advanced planning stages for ¹û¶³´«Ã½'s Oconee Campus, where additional parking and traffic circulation will be provided in coordination with considered road improvements, and on the Cumming Campus where additional parking may be installed below Building I.

For more information regarding these projects, contact ¹û¶³´«Ã½ Parking & Transportation Services.