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UNM’s Parking and Transportation Services has found a new home on campus.
PATS’s office, which was previously located on the intersection of Central Avenue and University Boulevard, has moved to the space beside the Cornell Parking Structure across from the UNM Bookstore. The new office officially opened Monday.
PATS Interim Director Barbara Morck said the department has been planning the move since last school year.
“At the end of May, that’s when it started to accelerate,” she said. “The Physical Plant Department got involved on how the floor plan was going to look like.”
She said the move arrived naturally when University Communications and Marketing vacated the space to move to the Bursar’s Office this semester.
“We’re next to the Cornell Parking Structure, which belongs to us, but is not a building that we’ve ever occupied,” she said. “When they decided that UCAM should be in another location … this is the logical spot.”
Morck said PATS had a budget of about $50,000 for renovations to the new office, which included new carpeting, computer wirings and moving help.
The department vacated its old location because the building was rundown, Morck said. But she said the University plans to retain ownership of the old building and to develop it into a commercial space.
“That is planned for development of some sort, probably for commercial or retail,” she said. “The University will continue to own the property, but they want to develop it as a revenue source.”
Morck said PATS’s new office will advantage students.
“This location is a lot more convenient for the students, as well as faculty and staff,” she said. “We’ve created parking spaces at the A Lot specifically for people coming to the Parking and Transportation office … It’s much more accessible.”
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Meena Lee, program manager of PATS, said the move will also be beneficial for the department’s staff.
“We’re on campus, so we’re more centrally located,” she said. “It’s easier now that we have operation team and we’re here, so we’re all closer together. Hopefully, this will make our operations and the administrative side work easier and closer together.”
Lee said PATS’s new office will also serve as UNM’s new Welcome Center, where employees will distribute brochures and direct visitors to locations on campus.
Despite the extra duty, Lee said the department did not hire additional employees. She said that although the move might be tedious for PATS staff at first, she is optimistic that operations would continue to run smoothly.
“I believe it will take some work at first just to transition into that,” she said. “Change always takes work … I think this move is a great change for us.”
