As of last night, the Dumke Building and surrounding buildings in the health sciences area lost 100 “A” parking stalls until Sept. 22 to resurfacing.
Lying on the ground along East Medical Drive, near the building, southwest of the Huntsman Cancer Institute, a sign read, “Vehicles in these stall after 10:00 Wed. Sept. 3 will be towed at owner’s expense.”
Included in those 100 stalls are six handicap stalls for patients of the nephrology and dialysis clinics in the Dumke Building.
That leaves 10 stalls for the building.
Two of those are needed by disabled employees of the clinics, leaving eight stalls for the estimated 70 patients a day that visit the three clinics, said Lori Petersen, medical assistant in the nephrology clinic.
The patients, who may have recently undergone an organ transplant or dialysis treatment, can’t walk very far.
On Wednesday afternoon, hospital administrators worked out a valet system for patients between the Dumke Building and the parking terrace shared by the Moran Eye Center and the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
The decision to do that was not made earlier because Chrissy Daniels, director of customer service at the hospital, did not understand that the lot would be closed today.
Thinking the closure would not occur until Monday at the earliest, she said the hospital administration was still working out the plan to valet Dumke patients.
“We’ll see over a few days what the best solution is,” she said. “I probably should have been quicker to communicate. We haven’t had a confirmation from the construction company and it’s not good to plan these things too much in advance.”
When told the lots would be closed that night she responded, “That’s not my understanding.”
But David Moyes, construction coordinator for Commuter Services, said they meet with a hospital committee almost weekly to discuss construction projects. That committee includes Daniels, as well as hospital manager, Dan Lundergan.
Addressing the confusion over when the parking lot would close, Moyes said, “They’ve known about it for at least three weeks.”
To announce lot closures due to construction, commuter services posts signs around the lot, places flyers on car windshields, e-mails hospital administrators and notifies The Pulse, the hospital newsletter.
In her defense, Daniels explained that the closure of the hospital’s entrance loop has forced her to reroute the estimated 1,000 people that visit the hospital daily.
That’s an equivalent of 500 stalls. The Dumke Building issue only concerns about five stalls, she said.
Besides, they’re not losing all of the patient parking, just some of it, she said.
But when there are only 14 available stalls for 70 patients and six of those are taken away, clinic staff get upset.
“We already have an issue as it is,” Petersen said.
According to Kim Phillips, director of the nephrology clinic, a contributing factor to the confusion over patient parking is the fact that the Dumke Building is not technically located on hospital property.
The building is technically on campus property, so there is not the usual line of communication between U Hospitals and Clinics and Commuter Services.
Although the patient parking situation was quickly solved by the valet proposal, after Dan Lundergan was informed of the problem, Dumke Building employees still have no parking.
Although they paid for the $180 “A” lot pass to park next to the building, they must now park in “U” lots and walk 15 to 20 minutes to work, Petersen said.
In addition to the 100 stalls closed, several were taken away previously to give operation space to the contractors who are constructing the Emma Eccles Jones building.
Petersen and fellow medical assistant Patti Pingrey are upset that they must pay for passes to park in stalls that have been given to a construction company for trailer space.
But if the U charged the contractors to use the spaces, it would only increase the cost of the project for the U, said Alma Allred, director of Commuter Services.
Pingrey and dialysis program administrator Steven Hemming would like Commuter Services to provide alternative parking space if lots have to be closed down.
There’s just no way to do that, Moyes said.