New parking decks have been proposed as a part of Coastal Carolina University’s Master Plan as it continues to develop and more details are released.  

During a town hall meeting on campus Nov. 14 in the Coastal Theater, Irene Duman Tyson, director of planning for Boudreaux, talked about the Master Plan for Coastal and what building projects were planned for the next 10 to 20 years. 

Four potential parking decks in total were announced in the Master Plan draft, and according to Tyson, the first one is planned to be built next to the future Conway Medical Center College of Health and Human Performance building. According to the Master Plan draft map, both buildings will be at the corner of Chanticleer Drive and Founder’s Drive, which is one of the four prime locations chosen for the parking decks. 

“The idea is that the parking decks will be very close to core campus so it’s more convenient for commuter students, for faculty and staff to use them, and even when you have visitors on campus, whether it’s for musical performance, a theater performance, or a football game,” she said. “When the public is coming on campus that they would be centrally located where people are coming for certain activities.” 

The cost of these new parking decks is estimated to be around $20,000 to $28,000 per parking space, according to Tyson, with each deck roughly calculated to contain around 600 parking spaces. She said parking decks allow opportunities to include structures such as retail or restaurants within its ground floor level, further contributing to the campus.  

Junior biochemistry major Rye Lewis said he believes the addition of the parking decks will help future students. He recalled a time when he wasn’t able to complete a test due to not being able to find a parking spot. 

“I have a 45-minute commute down and back, sometimes traffic gets the best of me,” Lewis said. “I’m like one of the last ones here to get parking and sometimes I don’t have a parking space to go to.” 

Junior art history major Nikkole Miller, also a commuter, said she believes the inclusion of parking decks would absolutely solve the problem with parking and students need it, since her search for a parking spot on some days take up a large amount of her time.  

“Some days I drive in circles in the GG parking lot, in the KK parking lot, I drive in circles for hours looking for one open spot,” Miller said. “One day, I did that for over an hour because I could not find a parking spot at all.” 

Tyson said the parking decks were just one piece of the long term puzzle of the future improvements, with the Master Plan acting as a roadmap to ensure the facilities needed will fit well on campus. She said it makes Coastal a place where students will want to continue to learn at if their demands are met, which is the goal of the long term vision of the campus.