The number of parking spaces taken over by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee reached 1,250 Sunday, with the closure of the Rice-Eccles Stadium parking lot.
The parking lot was closed to accommodate Olympic support facilities, said Ron Cameron, SLOC general manager for Opening and Closing ceremonies, in an earlier interview.
Because SLOC has taken over the entire stadium, both the east and west parking lots are closed.
“We recognize the U has some parking problems, and we’ve worked with parking services to minimize our impact as much as possible,” Cameron said. “We’re only asking for the spaces necessary to put on the kind of undertaking we’re putting on here.”
SLOC is using the lot to build its broadcast, logistics, telecommunications and information services stations.
The southern corner of the lot will also house the “spectator ingress plaza” in February, where Olympic spectators will go through security checks, Cameron said.
In exchange for the stadium, SLOC is paying an $8.3 million stadium rental fee, said Norm Chambers, director of Auxiliary Services, in an earlier interview.
“That money has helped pay for a state-of-the-art stadium,” he said. “Previously, we had the smallest stadium in our conference.”
Chambers believes hosting the Olympics has also helped the U get light rail.
“In the long run, all of this will be worth it,” Chambers said. “Does that ease the short-term pain? Probably not.”
The lot closure doesn’t sit well with many students.
“That really stinks,” Scott Maruri, a pre-dentistry student, said in early November. “Why pay $120 to not be able to park anywhere?”
Chambers hopes comments like these are in the minority.
“I hope students have an adventure attitude. It’s an exciting time on campus, I hope we can deal with it in the most positive way possible,” he said.
SLOC promises to return the stadium by April 15.
However, because the Paralympic Closing Ceremony has been moved to downtown Salt Lake, parking should become available sooner, Chambers said.
“Our hope is that by the end of March, we can get all of the parking back,” Chambers said. “There should be dramatic parking improvement by the third week of March.”
SLOC will also work to clean up as soon as possible.
“We’re going to attempt to free up parking as quickly as we can, we recognize we have a huge project to remove our footprint,” Cameron said.