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NIC parking woes grow

Christina Draggoo was tired of waiting for the shuttle at the parking lot at Memorial Field to take her to classes at North Idaho College on Wednesday, so she said she had to start her search for a parking spot on her own. Starting Monday, students at North Idaho College won't have the option of parking at Memorial Field. (Kathy Plonka / The Spokesman-Review)
Taryn Brodwater Staff writer
Christina Draggoo was tired of waiting for the shuttle at the parking lot at Memorial Field to take her to classes at North Idaho College on Wednesday, so she said she had to start her search for a parking spot on her own. Starting Monday, students at North Idaho College won't have the option of parking at Memorial Field. (Kathy Plonka / The Spokesman-Review)

Christina Draggoo was a half hour late for class the first day of school this fall.

The 21-year-old North Idaho College student said she might have been on time if she hadn’t spent 30 minutes circling campus in search of a parking spot.

On Wednesday, she found an empty spot in the nearly packed Memorial Field parking lot and planned to take NIC’s shuttle bus to campus. But she grew impatient waiting for the bus and decided to try her luck at finding a spot closer to class.

“I’ll probably be looking for the next half hour,” she said.

Come Monday, finding a parking spot will be even more challenging. Draggoo and other students at North Idaho College won’t have the option of parking at Memorial Field.

The parking lot is funded with federal money through the Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965. That funding comes with a condition – use of the parking lot must support public recreation.

Doug Eastwood, director of Coeur d’Alene’s Parks Department, said the city could be fined if it continued to allow NIC to use the lot.

In fall 2001, NIC began using lots at Memorial Field and the neighboring Museum of North Idaho through a cooperative agreement with the city. The agreement was sparked by concerns from Fort Grounds residents who said they were having trouble parking in front of their own homes because students were parking there.

Now parking on most every street in the Fort Grounds neighborhood is limited to residents with parking permits.

For years, NIC has struggled to provide enough parking for its growing student population. The shuttle service from nearby city lots to the campus was designed to ease some of the college’s parking woes.

Until this fall, the use of Memorial Field parking lots didn’t cause a problem, said NIC spokesman Kent Propst. But construction of NIC’s new Health Sciences Building has tied up about 200 parking spaces, forcing more students to park in city lots and use the shuttle service.

The college converted a former campground into additional parking, with 150 spaces and a small shuttle station where students can wait out of the rain and snow, but even that lot is full, said Mike Halpern, director of campus safety and support services.

Memorial Field has just less than 50 parking spaces. That will be added to the college’s parking debt.

During a meeting Tuesday with Coeur d’Alene’s City Council, Propst said the city said it would be nice if students visited downtown during breaks from school to drink coffee and eat lunch at local restaurants.

“Nobody is going to surrender their parking spot to go downtown and grab lunch and come back,” Propst said. “If you get one, you better hang on to it. It won’t be there when you get back. It won’t be there within 30 seconds of when you left it.”