Section 1

June 14th, 2010 at 1:11 PM ^

the more pathetic our parking facilities look.  That's got to be Brandon's biggest "facilities" priority.

Section 1

June 14th, 2010 at 2:22 PM ^

But of course, "tailgating" is a significant part of the game day experience.

I've got nothing but high praise for what Bill Martin accomplished.  Unfortunately, what he didn't do, or didn't have the opportunity to do, is more and better parking.  It'll take vision, planning and excution in the case of Michigan.  But let's face it.  Yost parking sucks.  Baseball parking is weak.  Basketball parking is going to be a big problem in the future, as the Player Development Center wipes out a lot of the surrounding parking.

And football is more or less an organized catastrophe -- we're taking an already-inadequate number of Blue Lot spaces, and reserving them for Suite Patrons.  (Great -- a sterile bunch of locked cars right next to the Stadium, with their owners inside, "tailgating" in their catered suites.)  More Blue Lot-aspiring donors are being turned away, as we have fewer spaces (Crisler consturction), more demand, and a whole new category of reserved placeholders.

It could be worse; Wisconsin has nothing but a tiny lot for emergency and service vehicles.  MSU and OSU have the advantage of being surrounded not by a residential neighborhood, but rather by University campus that can be entirely repurposed for game-days.  But Michigan really has to do something better for parking; obviously not everybody can be accomodated with a spot in the Blue Lot.  But there has to be a better way, that better parking in that larger area could servenot only the Stadium, but also Yost, Ray L.Fisher, and perhaps even softball, Canham, and other facilities.

Section 1

June 14th, 2010 at 5:00 PM ^

Then again, a lot of stadiums are ugly.  (Penn State, Illinois, etc.)  Ours is a thing of beauty and elegance.  Just because a thing is a stadium doesn't make it beautiful, or ugly.  And just because a thing is a parking structure doesn't mean it has to be hideous.  Indeed, just because a thing is "the Michigan football building" and is named Schembechler Hall doesn't mean it will necessarily be beautiful, because it certainly isn't.

I'm no fan of parking structures.  Of course, I am not a big fan of the add-on to Crisler, either, at least not on a land-use basis.

I'm not predicting what any particular parking solution might be; nor am I demanding any particular new parking structures.  I'm just saying that's what Dave Brandon's task will be, in his tenure of overseeing the Athletic Campus.