By Cody Porter

Upcoming construction on the Wildcat Coal Lodge will take away several E-Lot parking spaces usually filled by UK staff and faculty.

Last week, Codell Construction Management partially barricaded the parking lot located next to the Joe Craft Center.

Throughout the duration of the Coal Lodge construction, 109 of the 157 parking spaces will not be available for use. At project’s end, only 16 of those spaces are expected to be available again.

“We are landlocked here at the university, which makes any land without a building on it a precious commodity,” Bob Wiseman, vice president for facilities management, said.

Wiseman also spoke about the university’s land use master plan that will help the campus “develop and grow in a sustainable manner.”

“That master plan calls for a greater concentration of buildings on north campus and a need for a parking garage in this area in the future, as surface parking is consumed by building growth,” Wiseman said.

North campus, as mentioned by Wiseman, is an area that plays host to the Joe Craft Center, Memorial Coliseum, campus housing and soon the Wildcat Coal Lodge.

In the coming year, parking for not only employees from the E-Lot but students in residence halls or attending events at the athletic complexes increases the need for another parking structure in the future, Wiseman said.

In fall of 2009, the UK Board of Trustees approved the construction of the new $7 million, 20,000 square foot Wildcat Coal Lodge.

The lodge, which will feature a tribute to the coal industry in its lobby, will be the new home to UK men’s basketball players upon its expected completion in March 2012.

UK Parking and Transportation Services advise that any employees that typically park in the E-Lot find parking elsewhere on campus. A map of available employee and student parking can be found on the PTS website, http://www.uky.edu/Parking.