Last week on Monday, the Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced that his administration will contribute around $78 million to the University of Massachusetts Boston in order to financially support the repairs of the underground parking garage below the university’s campus.
Baker’s Communication Director Lizzy Guyton explained in an official statement that this financial contribution from the Baker administration will be part of the overall capital plan for the fiscal year 2018, which the Governor will most likely release and present sometime in the upcoming weeks.
According to the statement, “The Baker-Polito Administration is committing $78 million to UMass Boston in this year’s capital budget for the campus parking garage to support infrastructure needs and uphold our commitment to ensure UMass remains a successful and competitive public university system for Massachusetts students.”
However, this financial support from the Governor’s office will not cover the total cost of all the construction in relation to the parking garage. According to a recent Boston Globe article, the cost can vary “between $150 million and $260 million, depending on different estimates from the state and Umass [Boston].”
In an interview with WGHB on April 20, Governor Baker emphasized the importance that Umass Boston has to the city’s residents, but also criticised the uncertainty that emerged during the budget crisis. “My hope is that what UMass does at this point going forward with Umass Boston protects the academic program […] and solves their financial problem by dealing with what I would describe as the corporate stuff.”
The crumbling underground parking garage has now been closed for over a decade. On July 19, 2006, the Umass Boston administration decided to permanently close the 1,500 vehicle space because “road salt combined with water seeping into the structure […] had eroded the steel and concrete materials.”
As a result, the parking garage became a safety hazard for the people using it. While initially the university attempted to conduct smaller repairs, it later decided to abandon the parking space completely. The major reason for that was that a reconstruction and repair of the overall garage would have cost the university an estimated $150 million. At that point in time, Umass Boston did not have the Master Plan approved, nor did it have all its funding yet. Therefore the university’s leadership was unsure about where they would get the finance for this project from. And even after the closing, the university still had around 1,200 parking spots at the outdoor lots available.
However, due to the more recent construction efforts on campus, which have been conducted as part of the 25-year Master Plan, more and more of the remaining parking spaces have become lost. And while these plans also include two completely new parking garages on campus, neither of them have been completed yet.
The first one is already in the process of being built along University Drive West after its groundbreaking celebration in earlier this year in January. The $71 million building will be UMass Boston’s first free-standing parking garage, and will be able to accommodate around 1,400 vehicles, as well as include spaces for bicycle storage, and other dedicated spaces.
According to the official plans, the 500,000 square foot building is set to be opened during the spring semester of next year. The construction of the second parking garage building will follow shortly after that, as part of phase one of the Master Plan, in order to “replace the surface parking lost to new campus construction.”