With no available parking spaces on campus and a long waiting list to obtain one, students are forced to find other means of parking their cars. Most students park in the Flipside parking lot across the street from school, but as of Feb. 21, parking was constricted.

Before, the Flipside lot owners expressed concerns regarding student parking after they had received complaints about reckless driving, which interfered with the safety of those leaving the neighboring TotSpot Preschool.  Through threats of towing and security postings, the reckless driving has been reduced since then, but the overload of student’s parking in the lot has left no room for employees and customers of the surrounding businesses. Security has even been sent over to the lot to regulate where students are parking and help control the crowding.

Students parking in the lot have been asked to limit their parking only to the middle of the lot to prevent them from interfering with the businesses in the lot. If unable to park at Flipside, some students have even resorted to parking in the multitude of residential areas surrounding the school; if caught, they could be faced with a hefty fine.

Luckily, a solution to next year’s parking woes is underway. The school has purchased land in between the Jehovah’s Witness hall and the Seminary building. The land is under development to become the next parking lot for students and is estimated to hold 217 parking spots, as well as handicap parking.

“The hardest thing is you [have to]  get through the city of Gilbert and show them plan review and once they bless all that, it’s construction,” Principal Dan Serrano said.

The process started back in summer when the school was struggling to buy the land from the owner. It was a challenge as the people who live around the area did not want a parking lot to be near their homes.

The process of buying the land for the parking lot is a lot like buying a house. After purchasing the land, an architect has to draw up a plan for the lot, which is then submitted to the City of Gilbert to be approved.

“They’ve accepted our offer, now we have to go through a whole process, now that it’s ours, plans have to go through to the city of Gilbert, then construction companies come to bid on it for the job,” Serrano said. The district started looking into the process of building a parking lot over the summer. They look over data like how many kids drive and how many kids are on the waiting list for parking spots to determine how much land to buy and develop.

“It’s a big process,” Serrano said. “There’s drainage, electrical, asphalt and block work. that will all take about 60 to 90 days of construction.”

Through all the tribulations, the school was only able to buy half of the land, leaving 2.5 acres up to purchase. Serrano is hoping that with the land that the school purchased being underdevelopment to become a parking lot, it will lessen the value of the lot next to it. If the value goes down, the hopes are that the owner of the property will be more than willing to sell it to the school so they can build onto the parking lot and make it larger to fit the growing student population.
Construction for the lot was previously expected to be finished by graduation, but with the process taking a little longer than expected, it is now being more realistically looked at being finished by the beginning of the next school year, just in time for the new wave of students beginning to drive to school. With the addition of the new lot, tons of stress will be avoided for both students and administration.