Parking garages is the answer to the lack of parking in the Ole Miss and the Oxford community. The Parking Commission met on friday morning to discuss the benefits, pricing and logistics of the new parking garage on campus and the potential parking garage on the Square.

Although the parking commission’s meeting did not meet quorum, the officials discussed the future actions of a new parking garage on the Square. In order for executive action there must be five members of the board in attendance.

The new parking garage on campus is predicted to be open in August, and parking passes will be sold to students this summer. The garage will offer 1,532 new spots. Students with passes to the lot will not have assigned spots, but will be guaranteed to have a spot to park within the garage according to the director of the Department of Parking and Transportation at Ole Miss, Mike Harris.

The total cost of building the new garage on campus $29.5 million.

“It’s about time we got more parking,” said Ole Miss student Kaitlyn Collins. “If you ask any student on campus what their biggest daily problem is, it’s finding parking.”

“It’s what we all need, the way the University is growing, every time you build a building, your building it on top of a parking lot, so we continue to lose parking and add students,” said Harris. “We have to have garages, garages is the only way to position yourself around the campus and get to the buildings.”

The Oxford Parking Commission Board, has been discussing to option of building a parking garage on the Square. The garage would displace 236 parking spots. The construction would start in January and the process would take a year, with the completion of the garage in January, 2019.

“It goes very quickly, when they start putting it together, it goes very quickly,” said Harris. “It’s just like a lego record set, it just comes together piece by piece.”

For decades the Square has had parking meters, and used different companies to run them. Four years ago the meter system went in house, according to Mayor Pat Patterson. The clerks and teller have free parking and the meter parking for customers of the Square.

“As an employee on the Square, I know it something that extremely needed,” said Leland Graeber, an employee at Jones At Home Interiors. “It’s frustrating when you have to pay for parking while your working.”

During the construction period, customers and employees are going to have to find alternative parking. According to Graeber it will be worth the period of walking to work, rather than paying for parking every day.

“If we can get a garage on the Square like the one already built on campus; I think the community could be pretty well served,” said Mayor Patterson.