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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Gu Area Parking Solutions Yet To Be Squeezed Into Reality

School hadn’t started, but neighborhood streets near Gonzaga University were already lined with parked cars last week.

“This summer it was bad,” said Shannon Boroff, a GU junior who attended summer classes. “You had to get here before 7 to get a spot within five minutes walking distance.”

Get used to it.

It looks like students, staff and neighbors will have to put up with another year of a campus crowded with cars. Three planned fixes - two new university parking lots and a permit system designed to keep residential streets clear - are still just in the works.

The parking lots won’t open for another year due to a lack of money to pave them. A 54-space lot is planned for Boone and DeSmet, and a 34-space lot is planned for Boone and Van Gorp. The first lot already has received city approval and the second has yet to be assessed by the city Planning Department.

“At this point, they’re just kind of on hold,” Gonzaga spokesman Dale Goodwin said. He said the lots should open next school year.

Enrollment is down and so is money, said Ken Sammons, the school’s director of planning and construction.

Last week, two university-owned houses at the corner of Boone and Hamilton sat on wheels, jacked up and ready to roll. The homes had been sold to make room for the parking lot.

Gonzaga explained the moves to Logan neighbors in its “Neighbor to Neighbor” newsletter Aug. 27.

The park-by-permit system has been rolling along, too. but at the speed of an AMC Pacer with flat tires. Logan residents have lobbied for it for three years.

The final draft of the ordinance is being prepared for city approval, said Bud Vokoun, city traffic engineer. He said the plan should come before the City Council at the end of this year or early 1997.

That plan would split neighborhoods into zones where only residents could park during certain days or hours. If the plan is approved, any Spokane neighborhood would be able to petition for it.

“The ordinance is a city-wide thing, but the people in Logan are particularly concerned about it,” Vokoun said.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to park in front of your own house,” said Margaret Hurley, who lives near GU’s education building. Hurley, who heads Logan’s residential parking committee, said she thinks the new lots will help out.

She’s also a longtime advocate of the park-by-permit idea.

In the meantime, university officials say they sympathize with neighbors, but there’s not much they can do.

“That’s the problem; they’re city streets. There is nothing we, as a private university, can do,” Goodwin said.

“There’s no hammer we can hold over anybody’s head.”

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