WTAMU students returning for the spring semester were greeted by construction sites that have scattered throughout campus.
The JBK expansion is progressing, a new residence hall has begun construction , the athletic center at Buffalo Sports Park is underway and the renovations for the engineering building are being finished up.
“A lot of construction is based on our campus growth. If we build all of this now and the campus does not grow anymore, we may not build a lot more,” Vice President of Student Affairs Don Albrecht said. “If we build all this now and the campus grows and it grows and it grows we’ll have to build some more.”
Many students are concerned that the physical progress of a parking lot is the one construction site that is missing.
“I think that [parking] is the biggest issue on campus right now,” senior Advertising and Public Relations major Jordan Smith said. “Universities that don’t have huge parking spots get away with it because they are in big cities and cities like that are walking cities.
Everybody walks everywhere. You don’t see anybody walking around here because many people that go to WT live in Amarillo.”
“If you don’t know [about the parking lot in development] and you think that we are not doing anything, [frustration] is understandable,” Albrecht said.
The First United Bank Center offers students extra parking spaces, and WT has bus shuttles that take students to other spots on campus.
“People don’t want me to say this, but it’s not a parking problem, it’s a walking problem,” Vice President for Business and Finance Gary Barnes said. “We are a creature of habit, and our culture is that we would like to park at the front of where we are going to go in.”
According to Barnes, a parking lot with 600 spaces is in development and will start being constructed north of the Sports Complex in March 2012.
“We want to move parking from the interior of the campus to the outside of the campus. When you do that you move the parking lots and spaces a little further away from the buildings,” Barnes said.
Students, such as Smith, question why money is being spent on so many other projects and not being used on a parking garage.
According to Albrecht, a parking garage had been in consideration at one point, but the cost was too much and students surveyed were not willing to pay the higher parking permit costs of $300.
Albrecht said the financial support for many of the projects does not necessarily come from the school budget, but rather private donors and fundraisers. Many donors have specific ideas of how the money donated should be spent and a parking garage is never at the top of the list.
According to Barnes, construction does not affect tuition and only affects room and boarding or the fees that students approve of such as the JBK expansion.
“Even with the increased student fees that the students voted on for the Sports Complex and for the JBK, we were in the bottom third of the state in total cost.”
Barnes said it is the goal of WT to grow as a campus even though construction can sometimes become an issue.
“Well I think it is important to improve the university,” Barnes said. “The people who benefit from that are the students. We want to improve the campus [and] the services for the students.”
