UK will take the next step in building a parking facility for north campus students later this summer. 

During Friday’s Finance committee meeting of UK’s Board of Trustees, Eric N. Monday, UK’s executive vice president for finance and administration, told trustees the university will look for a partner for a possible parking facility project on the current Jersey Street parking lot and release a Request for Proposals later this summer.

Monday said UK anticipates the facility will have four stories. The lowest level will have space for businesses and the upper stories will have room for a few hundred parking spaces. The university wants to keep the design of the facility consistent with the area’s neighborhood. 

The Jersey Street parking lot is now an E-lot with 150 parking spaces near Raising Cane’s and Insomnia Cookies. Monday told the board UK has owned the lot for several years. 

“One thing we learned in our Transportation Master Plan is that we need more parking and we may need as many as a couple more thousand parking lots by 2020,” Monday said. “So, we’ve identified this piece of property, it has the ability to be multiple stories. We’ve also seen a lot of interest from various retailers to come into this marketplace, some large retailers, names that we would know.” 

UK released the TMP recently to improve transportation and mobility around campus. Almost 2,500 UK students will live on the north end of campus with new residence halls opening this fall. 

“(The parking facility) would meet the needs of campus but also most of the local businesses,” Monday said. “Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking to a lot of these businesses in and around that area and we’ve received tremendous, tremendous positive feedback because it is a challenge that we share with them.”

The project will be a partnership between the university and local businesses. Monday said UK’s similar public-private partnerships in the past have received positive feedback.

Read more about the UK Board of Trustees morning meetings and afternoon meetings.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article said the parking facility will have 2,000 spaces. The facility is estimated to have a few hundred, but an exact number is not known at this time.