Delgado officials tackling parking dilema

The parking woes at Delgado Community College’s Slidell campus are warranting some needed attention.

Throughout any day of the week during the semester, as many as 2,000 and few as 100 students visit the site at 320 Howze Beach Road.

Those numbers far exceed the amount of parking spots available.

“Parking has been a challenge because we’re basically locked in,” Ashley Chitwood, assistant dean for Delgado on the Northshore, said.

The land the school sits on is sandwiched between automobile dealerships on either side and a privately owned building in its rear, leaving no room for expanding the parking area.

Chitwood said several years ago the landlord agreed to create an overflow gravel lot far behind the school, but the additional spaces still aren’t nearly enough to alleviate the parking woes, not to mention it’s very inconvenient for students.

Chitwood and other representatives from the campus met recently to come up with possible solutions to the problems.

Several were offered that will be implemented during the spring semester.

Parking decals will be implemented for the first time for the Covington and Slidell campuses.

“That’s going to do two things: make sure our spaces are being used by our students and also provide revenue for other things to help with the parking situation,” Chitwood said, adding the Southshore campuses already require decals. The decals will be accepted at all of the campuses, Chitwood said.

Delgado officials are also talking with parish officials to work something out with the current park and ride facility located on Oak Harbor Drive. Chitwood hopes the facility will be able to bring students to Delgado.

Another solution to the parking dilemma is designated carpool parking spaces on campus.

“We’re going to give it a shot in January where students who want to participate would have to identify the students that will be carpooling with them,” Chitwood said, adding they would implement the method using decals.

Other solutions involve scheduling more classes during off-peak hours and re-striping the current lot during the holiday break to fit extra vehicles.

“Parking is a problem for universities and colleges across the country because they have more students than parking spots,” Chitwood said.

She hopes these problems will be alleviated in the future with the construction of the new centralized university complex to be built in Lacombe.