Man on the Street: IUPUI Expanding

Students have a bit of change to look forward to for the upcoming school year as IUPUI expresses plans for some architectural advancements on campus. The Indiana University Board of trustees approved the move for a new Multidisciplinary research and classroom building to hit IUPUI's campus. This new building is set to aid the needs of teachers and students in the School of Science, School of Engineering and Technology and School of Informatics and Computing by providing a focused scientific environment conducive to their studies.

The new building is set to include state of the art lab spaces,  classrooms, collaborative learning spaces, a makerspace, and a cleanroom environment. The modernized classrooms that will occupy the first floor of the building include an 81 seat learning space with moveable chairs, a 215 seat tiered lecture hall, and a football shaped 125 seat lecture hall in which the professor's desk is in the middle. All of these classrooms are designed in ways that promote collaborative learning  which seems to be a strong focus of the new building. The second and third floors are occupied by engineering labs, science labs, and more classrooms. The construction of the building is set to finish in August of 2020.

Although a growing campus is always something to embrace, many students and staff are taking this campus advancement as bitter sweet considering the limitations this new development will place on parking around campus. It is a common complaint amongst students and staff that the amount of parking spaces around campus is not comparable to the amount of students that need to park.

"I’m excited about the building, mostly for the future generation of students, but in my time here at IUPUI parking has been the hardest part, and with the new building coming to campus, I feel bad for the incoming freshmen,” senior Jaylen Ellison said.

These  types of complaints will only increase as the amount of parking spaces decrease, and with the addition of the new multidisciplinary building parking spaces will do just that. The building is set to be developed in what is now parking lot 83 which is the lot immediately west of the Informatics building on the corner of Michigan and Blackford. The university has plans to shift parking spaces in other places in an effort to accommodate for the loss of spaces in Lot 83 which will be evident sooner than later as they will be closing down the lot as early as April 22nd to prepare for construction.

As recompense for the closure of lot 83, which is currently a lot primarily for people with employee permits, IUPUI parking services plans to open up half of the spots in lot 85 and 73 to employees.

“Limited parking spaces has always been an issue, but we will be making adjustments in accordance to what is necessary from this point and when things fall in place we will have a system that’s fair to everybody with permits. No matter the case of parking, campus prosperity is at the forefront as IUPUI grows, and the brains of its students grow with it,” Ben Harris, IUPUI parking services employee said.

This reallocation of spaces seems to solve one problem and present another as it will take away half of the student parking spaces in lots 85 and 73.