Students will start feeling the effects of USC’s plans to build a privately funded dorm behind the Carolina Coliseum as soon as next week.
The Coliseum parking lot at the corner of Blossom and Park streets will be closed permanently on Saturday so that construction crews can move in next week.
To make up for the lost lot, the university is opening up the Discovery Garage for free parking for students and faculty with certain parking decals — S, N, Z, GS and CS — until May 11. A new faculty parking area will be established in the parking lot bordered by Blossom, Devine, Lincoln and Park streets.
University spokesman Wes Hickman said USC wasn’t given much notice that crews would be moving into the lot and that the university would do its best to reach out to people who park there. USC is buying advertisements in The Daily Gamecock this week, and anyone parked in the lot on Saturday will get a phone call telling them to move.
Charles Bierbauer, dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, said that parking will always be a concern on any growing campus.
“As the journalism school prepares to move to the center of campus, we will be giving up formerly convenient parking for a higher visibility location and even a view — a building with windows,” Bierbauer said. “Life comes with trade-offs.”
Next semester, starting Aug. 11, the parking situation will change more. A parking lot near Gadsden and Greene streets will become a faculty lot, and the faculty parking in the lot closest to the new Darla Moore School of Business will be closed for more construction.
And in May, the walking bridge to the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center will be closed, too.
The 878-bed dorm project will open in two phases, with the first opening in fall 2015 behind the Coliseum. The second phase is planned to open in the fall of 2016.
Upon its completion, the housing project will include around 700 parking spaces for residents.
Editor’s note: Editor-in-Chief Thad Moore contributed reporting.