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Ashley-Rutledge Garage opens to visitors While patient visitor parking availability on campus increased by about 640 spaces with the opening of the Ashley-Rutledge Garage June 20, tight employee parking also breathed a sigh of relief with the impending freeing for employee use of former patient spaces in the Rutledge Tower garage.   About 10 percent of the spaces in the new garage will be reserved for handicapped patrons.   The new garage gives access to the Storm Eye Institute by the existing elevated connector and a mid-block crosswalk to be installed on Ashley Avenue. The crosswalk will include a speed hump to slow traffic in that area.   Parking Management's Cheryl Sturgis processes one of the first customers to use the new Ashley-Rutledge Parking Garage which opened June 20. Space in the new garage was also allocated for the University Bookstore and for a physical therapy and occupational therapy clinic.   As patients and visitors are transitioned out of the Rutledge garage to the new facility between Ashley and Rutledge avenues, about several hundred new employee assignments were added to MUSC’s parking system.   To backfill the available spaces in the Rutledge garage, an open enrollment produced 2,300 requests for reassignment to the Rutledge garage.  The assignment list is being finalized now, and employees may find their assignment position by going to the parking Web page, http://www.musc.edu/parking and clicking on Parking Waiting List.    As a result of employees transferring from other campus locations into Rutledge Tower garage,  spaces in employee parking garage II and other campus locations will open and be backfilled from existing waiting lists.   After-hours employees who are currently using Parking Garage 2 will  shift to the new Ashley -Rutledge Parking Garage, allowing them covered access to the hospital by the elevated crosswalk over Ashley.  Employees will be notified when the relocation occurs sometime in July or August.   Parking Management director Melinda Anderson said that improvements in MUSC’s parking system are costly and that in order to be able to carry out planned improvements a $5 per month parking rate increase will be effective beginning July 1. A parking rate increase was delayed for two years since its approval by the MUSC Board of Trustees in 2002. On July 1, rates will bump from $50 to $55 for on campus reserved parking and from $25 to $30 for off campus reserved (Harborview Tower garage and the Lockwood Drive parking lot).   “The last increase in parking rates was July 1, 2002,” Anderson said. “Increases for 2003 and 2004 were deferred out of concern for other impacts on employee paychecks. Unfortunately, for the parking system to be able to meet its debt service requirements, the scheduled rate increase plan must resume.”   Parking Management has been busy, both with recently completed parking projects and with projects still on the drawing boards or now under way.   In the recently completed column are: Student parking lot BB on Lockwood Blvd., 100 spaces Student parking on lot AA at Harborview Tower, 35 spaces Addition to the Hagood park-and- ride system, 175 spaces on Hagood Avenue and Line Street for employees and students Purchase of the Courtenay Drive garage (former county garage) 1,600 space employee and patient parking Ashley-Rutledge garage (Charleston High School site) 640 space patient and visitor garage Ten new buses purchased to replace aging transit equipment. Parking projects in the planning stages are: Lighting upgrades for Harborview Tower garage and the Rutledge Avenue employee garage (former Rutledge Tower patient/visitor and employee garage) and Jonathan Lucas Street patient/visitor garage.  All under design.  Work to begin later this year. Upgrade of elevators in the Harborview Tower employee garage; President Street employee garage; and the Jonathan Lucas Street patient/visitor garage. Authorization to proceed was issued for the Harborview Tower garage upgrade. The Jonathan Lucas Street and President Street garage elevator upgrades are planned for later this year. Renovation of the Rutledge Tower handicap parking lot.  This project will include landscaping, seal coating and restriping of the parking lot, and construction of a covered walkway linking the Ashley-Rutledge garage to Rutledge Tower.  Work is scheduled to begin shortly. To determine parking needs on campus for the next five to 10 years, a parking consultant will begin work in June to conduct a parking master plan review.     Friday, June 24, 2005 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.