Auburn University's Board of Trustees on Friday will consider a proposal to build a new parking deck on South College Street.
The new deck would be constructed in the south parking lot of the Auburn University Hotel and Dixon Conference Center.
The board's Property and Facilities Committee will hear the plans first early Friday morning before the full panel hears the proposal at their planned meeting later in morning at the hotel.
The estimated $13.2 million, five-story parking deck, if approved, would have 575 spaces — an addition of 395 spaces over the existing surface parking lot to the south of the hotel.
The deck would primarily be targeted for use by hotel guests and staff, students and faculty at the planned Tony and Libba Rane Culinary Science Center, faculty and staff at the Mell Classroom Building across the street and students parking at night to study at Ralph Brown Draughon Library.
When the Board of Trustees adopted a resolution approving the new culinary science center in 2017, a parking lot was planned for that location, which sits directly to the north of the Auburn University Hotel.
Later, though, it became clear the approved project site for the culinary science center wouldn't support a large, cost-effective parking deck, according to Board of Trustees documents.
The project was proposed to alleviate a problematic parking situation in the northeast portion of the campus core, according to the same documents.
The construction of the project would be funded by the University's general fund.
The deck would be put on an accelerated design and construction schedule with construction planned to begin this summer and a completion date of March 2019.
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Chip Brownlee, senior in journalism and political science, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
