Tight squeeze
Businesses suffer, lose customers as students park illegally due to limited space on campus
Laura McFarland
Staff Reporter

Llisa Lewis, general manager of TCU Bookstore, looks out the window at the parking lot in front of the store. All 152 parking slots are filled.

When she looks in the store, there are only 15 customers.

Molly Beuerman/SKIFF STAFF Local businesses often have their parking lots filled by TCU students’ cars. Customers must search for parking in other areas.

The TCU Bookstore is just one of the businesses around campus constantly struggling with some students to keep its parking lots open for customers so they don’t lose business. In the constant search for parking close to classes, these businesses are often the ones suffering, Lewis said.

Sid Weigand, owner of the Smoothie King on University Drive, said he has had a number of customers comment that they try to avoid his store because parking is so bad.

In order to maintain a healthy business, there are few options left for these businesses to keep TCU students from parking in their lots, Weigand said.

Jan Meyerson, owner of Jon’s Grille, said she has not had many problems with students parking in her lot since she took over the restaurant in November, but she has to pay to have extra help.

“I have a security person during lunch and dinner so they don’t have an opportunity to be a problem,” Meyerson said.

She said the security officer monitors the parking lot behind her building eight hours a week and instructs people to find different parking if they go into the bookstore instead or other businesses.

Lewis employs an off-duty TCU police officer in the bookstore four days a week.
On some days, especially when the weather is bad, the officer is always at the door to make sure people don’t use the lot to make their walk to class shorter.

In cases where Lewis or the officer see people getting out of the cars and warn them, Lewis said the answers can range anywhere from “I don’t care” to “So tow me.”

As a result, the businesses’ customers often cannot find a space to park in, Lewis said.
Lewis said she has had customers call on a cell phone from the parking lot because they can’t find a space. The customer tells an employee what they want, the employee gets it, takes it outside and completes the transaction without the customer ever entering the store.

Though Lewis said she does use towing to try to free up the parking lot, she said no matter what she decides to do, it still has negative effects, especially when students return to find their car towed and an $85 towing fee.

“If you park and go to class and get towed, the last thing you want to be is a customer,” Lewis said. “If you don’t have them towed, your customers can’t get in.”

In the year that Carla McQueen has worked at Einstein Bros. Bagels, she said parking has always been a problem. If customers don’t have a place to park, they don’t come in, she said.

McQueen said though she understands the students’ situations, she has had cars towed a number of times because the shop only has ten spots, and those spots are needed for customers. She monitors the cars for an hour, and if they do not belong to the customers at either her shop or the Smoothie King next door, she has them towed.

“I guess since it’s inconvenient for everyone; I did seek out a towing service that’s easy to find, and they don’t charge as much as the others,” McQueen said.

Though TCU has built eight new parking lots in the last four years that added 631 parking spaces, parking continues to be a problem, said Steve McGee, chief of police.
“The majority of the students obey the rules, but you have a few who just want to push the envelope,” McGee said.

Laura McFarland
L.D.McFarland@student.tcu.edu

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