The ongoing battle between commuter students for parking at UNM has claimed a new victim; nearby businesses.
Business owners that used to turn a blind eye to students using their parking lots are finding that policing their grounds may be the only way to keep unlawful motorists from taking parking spaces normally reserved for their customers.
As of this semester, there were 25,299 students enrolled at UNM’s main campus. At the same time, a little over 9,000 parking spaces were allotted to student commuters, of which almost 8,500 were purchased for a price ranging from $175 to $500. A motorcycle parking pass can also be purchased for $70.
Taking away the 3,360 students who call resident housing, Casas Del Rio and Lobo Village home, that leaves almost 13,500 students who commute to campus by human power and vehicle. UNM’s Department of Parking and Transportation Services wrote roughly 53,000 parking citations in the 2014-15 school year to drivers on main campus without permits.
Assad Rizvi, a senior engineering major and avid commuter, says that he doesn’t mind paying for parking on campus, as long as he can find a spot.
“I think the parking passes are overpriced,” Rizvi said. “I just park where I can and hope I don’t get a ticket.”
So far that strategy hasn’t worked out great for Rizvi, who said he has gotten six tickets for parking illegally on campus and faces a booted car if he incurs another citation.
“Usually, the further you park from campus the safer you are, as far as tickets go,” he says. “I look for paid parking and business lot spaces before five and residential spaces after five.”
Rizvi isn’t alone in looking to businesses for a place to park, something Larry Rainosek, the owner of Frontier restaurant, has had to overcome since he first opened up shop near UNM in 1971.
Back then, Rainosek said he only had six parking spaces, but it wasn’t long before he had to put in more.
“Parking has always been an issue for our business,” Rainosek says. “We feel that students are a great source of business for us. But policing your lots is just something you have to do in a congested area like this.”
Rainosek and his employees have come up with their own form of booting which involves a chain and a five gallon bucket filled with cement. The tactic keeps unlawful drivers in place till they pay their parking fines, but can be time-consuming and costly, Rainosek says.
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Still, he has decried merchants in the area who he says employ third-party booting companies that have gained notoriety for using what he calls “overly aggressive booting practices” that tend to leave motorists with a bad taste in their mouth.
“I don’t agree with the aggressive towing, it’s not a neighborly policy,” Rainosek says. “I’ve only had two cars towed from my lot since opening and those were repeat offenders. You try to be a good neighbor because you want people to be comfortable with your business. This is our neighborhood and we’d like to see the campus grow.”
Leopoldo Nunez, owner of the nearby Bandido Hideout restaurant, has seen first hand the booting practices in lots adjacent to his and he thinks they may be hurting the community.
“How much booters charge students is crazy,” Nunez says. “We’re not in the parking business. We’re in the restaurant business and that’s a community business.”
James Hawks, a manager at PIta Pit -- one of the companies who rents space from a landowner that employs a booting agency -- says his lot usually always has a space available, something he attributes to the signs posted around their business warning drivers that their vehicles will be towed if left unattended in their lot.
“People parking in your lot just comes with this neighborhood,” Hawks says. “You take the good with the bad. We miss the students when school isn’t in session.”
Larry Rainosek says students who are running late and need a place to park should come to the paid parking lot he operates at the intersection Silver Avenue and Cornell Drive, where there are usually spaces available for $1 an hour. He added that if anyone happens to be hungry when they’re walking by his business, all the better for everyone involved.
Evan Barela is a student in the Communications and Journalism Department.
