Parking at the Student Activity Center at

Presidential Village (SACPV)

Parking
Constructed in 2014, the Student Activity Center at Presidential
Village (SACPV) is an 85,000 square foot facility on the North-most
side of campus. The facility is open to all University of Alabama
students and holds cardio machines, a basketball court, rock
climbing wall, weight lifting equiptment and fitness classrooms.
However, not only is there no parking dedicated to this building but
there is also no parking options for students who are not residents
of the nearby dorm buildings. The only option for students who do
not posses these residential parking passes is to park in the 30minute and 1-hour public parking spaces down the hill at
Manderson Landing, putting students at risk of receiving a parking
ticket. For most students, 30 minutes to 1 hour is not enough time
to get in a proper workout. The lack of accessibility to SACPV deters
many students from putting the facility to use.

Method
Primary research consisted of researching the UA campus parking
zones map from the office of Parking and Transportation Services. In
addition, an inquiry email was sent to Chris DEsposito, director of
Transportation services. He stated that there were no areas in the
vicinity that are in the Campus Master Plan to be converted to
parking. Thirdly, a questionnaire was submitted to UA students to
see if this was a problem that impacted most students, and to find
possible solutions to the problem.
Secondary research came from responses to the questionnaire
stating that most students would be more likely to workout more if
they had easier access to a gym. Further research found that
exercise aids in memory and attention span, which would improve
student grades. In addition, observations of the campus parking
zones map found that since there is no space to build additional
parking, the best plan would be to re-zone some of the current

Solution
The proposed solution to increase student parking for SACPV is to
re-zone some of the pre-existing residential zones at some of the
surrounding dorms. By turning just a few spots in each of the
surrounding residential zones into commuter student parking, this
would allow significantly more access to the SACPV and come at
little change to the parking availability for the dorm buildings. In
addition, this change will come at no cost to the University and
can be implemented for the next school year.