This rendering of the Student Green looking toward
Bowman Hall shows a re-aligned Risman Drive that
connects to the existing Bowman/Satterfield parking lot.

The Kent State University Board of Trustees on June 4 approved a $4.75 million parking reconstruction plan for parking lots at Bowman and Satterfield halls and the Kent Student Center. The project will be constructed in two phases over the summers of 2015 and 2016 to minimize disruption to campus activities in this area.

Reconstruction of the Bowman and Satterfield lots is already underway and will address necessary lot maintenance and improve traffic patterns to benefit all vehicles and pedestrians. Funding will come from Parking Services reserves, and the parking lot will be open for use by the start of the fall semester. Due to the large scale of the project, contractors will be on site completing final details of work into the fall semester, but this will not affect parking for employees.

“It’s better to work on projects during the summer because we have a reduced population on campus,” says Michael Bruder, executive director of facilities planning and design at Kent State.

The construction this summer will primarily affect faculty and staff who have R-7 permits and park in the Bowman and Satterfield parking lots. While the lot is closed, R-7 permit holders can park in alternate lots like the R-12 Schwartz lot, R-2 Business lot or the Kent Student Center pay lot and meter section. Those who park at the pay lot or meters will need to show their permit on their way out.

“We want to try and give faculty and staff convenient parking during this time period,” says Larry Emling, Kent State’s manager of parking services. “This is about a 10-week project, so it will be a fast turnaround to get this done by the fall semester. The benefits and improvements that are made to this lot will outweigh the short-term disruptions over the summer.”

As a part of a campuswide parking capacity study, Kent State and Graelic LLC, a parking design and consulting organization, evaluated the parking configuration of the campus and determined that these improvements would best address the needs in this area of a growing campus with parking limitations.

“It was already a busy lot with a high concentration of faculty and staff, so the expansion of the Bowman lot is going to be very beneficial,” Emling says.

At the Bowman and Satterfield hall lots, workers will create a more efficient parking layout, expand the size of the parking spaces, construct safer crosswalks and sidewalks, and provide a central bus stop to serve Bowman and Satterfield halls and the Business Administration Building.

Pictured is a rendering of the new pedestrian walk that
will lead up to the front doors of the Memorial Athletic and
Convocation Center.

In the summer of 2016, the Kent Student Center lot will experience similar changes like a more efficient parking layout, an improved traffic pattern, clear crosswalks and sidewalks, an easy drop-off access to the University Library, Kent Student Center and Memorial Athletic and Convocation (MAC) Center, maximized parking spaces and boulevard sidewalks to connect the MAC Center to the event overflow lot. The work in 2016 at the Kent Student Center is being completed to relieve some of the anticipated traffic issues related to the Summit Street construction in this area of campus.

“The new design is a lot more intuitive,” Bruder says. “We spent a lot of time designing it because it involves both motorists and pedestrians. We want to make it easier to walk through that part of campus and have fewer pedestrian conflicts with vehicles. We also want to align the parking space count with the number of staff assigned to the area.”

For more information about campus construction this summer, contact Bruder at mbruder@kent.edu.

For more information about Kent State’s Parking Services, visit www.kent.edu/parking.