As autumn approaches and school starts back up, St. Edward’s University students are returning to campus, and parking problems are returning to the Sherwood Oaks neighborhood. As David Swann reported at the September general meeting, St. Edwards has begun posting No Event Parking signs at their parking lot closest to the Sherwood Oaks neighborhood. See the attached photos taken the first weekend there was a soccer game at the no parking sign location. This contradicts the promises made by the University to provide event parking on campus.
The University sent out two very expensive separate mailings of the attached postcard to encourage our neighborhood to get RPP. SRCC has told the University, officially on many occasions, that SRCC wants the University to provide parking on campus, not in our neighborhood and we do not want RPP. Postcards appear to have been mailed to only a portion of the neighborhood, rather than to all residents, perhaps in an effort to cherry-pick results to their survey.
Mitigating overflow parking and event parking and the University’s continued promotion of RPP to solve their parking problem are the complaints heard most from neighbors. You will note that the postcard says the University is writing tickets for illegally parked cars on Congress and Woodward as well as St. Edwards Dr. No one can park on either Woodward near the campus or S. Congress in traffic lanes so this requires no effort on their part. Neighbors who live near the intersection of Carnarvon and St. Edwards Dr. have noted the SEU police parking their own private vehicles in the neighborhood near the Operations Building in order to avoid paying for on campus parking.
During August dorm orientation, the University map (below) provided to arriving students showed an arrow pointing to the campus entrance on St. Edwards Dr. at East Side Dr. as well as showing the new entrance closed on Woodward that directly accesses the parking garage. This Woodward entrance was clearly open when David and I walked there to check and you will note in the photo that the new Woodward entrance has a “NO TRUCK ENTRANCE†sign. This means the university is designing its interior vehicular plan to force trucks into our neighborhood. The SRCC Transportation Committee is working with Area 5 leaders and city staff to ensure that any plan the city implements regarding speed humps, bike lanes, etc will help and not make the problem worse by pushing the SEU overflow parking further into Sherwood Oaks.
