When thousands of cars go off to college, their owners often learn a harsh life lesson: Supply does not equal demand.
By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published October 12, 2003
[Times photos: John Pendygraft]
Nadine Priester, a program assistant at the University of South Florida at Tampa, says it took her 15 minutes to find a campus parking space on a recent Friday: “I only got a space because Jesus and Buddha love me.”
Greg Sylvester, director of parking and transportation at USF, uses a golf cart to navigate his domain.
On a Wednesday in September, vehicles prowl in search of an empty spot on Tampa’s USF campus.
[Times photo:
Skip O’Rourke]
GAINESVILLE - A kid works like a droid to get into a good college these days. Kid pretty much has to get all A's in high school and a 1250 on the SAT. It helps if Mom and Dad have money and influence, and it helps if the college prospect stars on the cross-country team, edits the school paper, sings in the church choir and volunteers at a homeless shelter.
So the kid - good looking, kind to animals - gets into college. Classes begin. Raised in the suburbs, perhaps a little spoiled, kid sleeps to the last minute. Kid slips into shorts, T-shirt, flip-flops and ball cap worn backward. Kid jumps into the graduation-present Jeep, breakfasts on Vanilla Coke and Pop-Tarts on the way, rattles the roof with Eminen, and hot rods over to the university. Kid figures to whip onto campus where a parking place will appear magically in front of the classroom door.
Poor lamb. The reality is as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting that might be called The Tow Zone Years.
A parking place? At the University of Florida? Just being able to drive from Point A to Point B is an accomplishment. Traffic is gridlocked. No turns at red lights. Gates blocking roads. Car windshields festooned with citations. More "Tow Zone" signs than magnolias.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
* * *
Scott Fox happens to own a car. But the assistant director of transportation and parking services at the University of Florida knows better than to try to actually use it on campus.
When he has somewhere to go, he rides his Segway, one of those fancy $5,000 scooters. He leans forward to go forward. When he leans back the Segway reverses. Twist the handle and he goes right or left. He tools down bike paths at 12 mph.
The important thing is, he needs no parking place. He carries his Segway right into the building.
He leans it against his office wall, next to a sign that says: The toughest part of an education is finding a place to park.
At no time in history has a sign been so true. Not only at the state's largest university, but at the University of South Florida in Tampa and Florida State in Tallahassee and anywhere else kids go to college.
You can't park unless you buy a permit. But buying a permit doesn't mean you can park. UF has 49,000 students and another 6,000 faculty and staff members. More than 38,000 chose this year to pay $94 and up for permits to compete - only to compete - for 23,419 parking spaces.
"Coming here is a bit of a culture shock for most kids," Fox says. "They expect driving to class is going to be as easy as shopping at 7-Eleven back home. Park and just walk in. Surprise."
The alternative is walking, the bus, the bike, parachuting out of a plane, being beamed by a Star Trek transporter from home to campus. But Floridians, especially college students, love their cars. If they can't park legally, they will park illegally, giving tow truck operators all over the city something amusing to do.
"It's no fun getting towed," Fox says. "And it's no fun dealing with somebody who has been towed. I know. I used to work in Philadelphia at a garage where cars were towed. I had to deal with some very angry people in a very tough town."
He survived.
"It's better here," he says. "At least we never find bodies in the trunk here."
* * *
Looking for a parking place can drive a good person to drink.
When it does, the thirsty sometimes end up at Cafe Gardens on University Avenue. The bartender is Jeannie Walsh. She will pour you a beer and talk to you in a low voice that oozes sympathy.
"A parking permit is really just a hunting license," she laments. A senior who majors in travel-and-leisure studies, she is a grizzled veteran of the parking wars. Last year she drove the 2 miles from her apartment to campus and spent an hour or more hunting for a parking space.
"A waste of time," she says. Now she lives a few blocks from campus and walks.
It took her countless parking tickets and four encounters with tow truck drivers to learn that walking isn't so terrible. She's ahead of the learning curve. So are kids who ride bikes and take the bus. Sometimes the shuttles, already overflowing with students, fly right past bus stops. Earlier this fall, 55,000 students took buses on a single busy day. By year's end, 8-million students will have done so. Only transit systems in Miami, Orlando and Broward County move more passengers.
By the way. If you stop and have a beer with Jeannie Walsh, don't lose track of time. And whatever you do, don't dare leave the parking lot on foot. Private businesses such as Cafe Gardens will summon a tow truck.
* * *
Nice Jeep, a Wrangler, four-wheel drive. Probably a graduation present. Driver looks nervous. Wonder why? Is he a rabbit?
That's what Bruce Stamper wants to know. He watches through binoculars from his perch in a wooden stand about 6 feet up an oak tree. A parking lot attendant, Stamper is employed by Gator Plaza. His job is making sure the lot is used by customers only. If the kid goes into that smoothie store, fine. But if the kid comes out of the store and crosses the street to campus, he's a rabbit. Stamper has a fleet assistant who will chase down the rabbit. If the rabbit is too fast, Stamper will call for a tow truck.
It's a daily drama here. Late for class, panicky students sometimes are tempted to park anywhere they can find a space. They typically choose a field behind a church, a fast-food restaurant lot or a place at a strip-shopping center. Inevitably, they match wits with attendants such as Stamper.
"We're hated around here," Stamper says. "I've been cursed at, spit on, shouted at. It's the worst job I've ever had. Yet I still hate to have anyone towed, especially some poor student. As long as they don't flick me off or say something bad about my mother I don't like to have them towed."
Getting your chariot back will cost $72.
* * *
Anyone unfortunate enough to need parking at a major college campus develops a strategy. Drive into a desirable lot. Follow a pedestrian who looks like he or she is leaving. Offer to drive the lucky pedestrian to his car. Hope the pedestrian is not Hannibal Lecter.
"We call it vulturing," says Greg Sylvester, the director of parking and transportation at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "Waiting for a space, students become like a vulture waiting for an animal to die."
Most parking administrators keep a low profile and avoid answering their telephones. In fact, good luck finding a phone number for them. But Sylvester, 44, is the exception. People call him direct. They complain and they cuss about parking fees ($105 to $620), parking citations (77,752 issued last year), getting booted (886 in 2002) getting towed (only 13 times). He listens patiently for the most part, though his skin grows thinner by the minute. He likes having the last word: Sometimes, after hanging up, he will continue a debate with a parking scofflaw by e-mail.
Nobody ever says, "I want to be a parking administrator when I grow up." Sylvester graduated with a political science degree from the University of Central Florida but got interested in transportation issues while a grad student at the University of Baltimore.
USF's parking guru for three years, he has learned to anticipate trouble. On the semester's opening day, he headed for the bottleneck brewing at Alumni and Maple drives. Tugging on a yellow vest, he directed traffic himself.
Although his resume does not include "traffic cop," his previous job prepared him for anything. As parking czar at Walt Disney World, he sometimes had to close the park when lots were filled. That has yet to happen at USF, though Sylvester worries that it could. USF has 36,000 students and 6,800 staffers - but only 17,365 parking places. More vultures lurk in parking lots than in the skies above campus.
"Students call me. They want to know what they can do to find a parking place. I tell them "don't ever procrastinate,' " Sylvester says. "Listen, if I were a student, I would arrive 45 minutes early. Spend no more than 10 minutes looking for a space in a convenient lot. Then go to one of the remote lots. That shouldn't take more than five minutes. Wait for a shuttle bus. We have 29 shuttle buses. We carried nearly 1-million passengers last year. A shuttle bus will take you to the heart of campus with 15 minutes to spare."
Everybody wants to know why his university - and other universities - don't simply build more parking lots. The answer is they do. Just not enough of them. Construction costs come out of a parking director's cookie jar. For example, Sylvester's $8-million budget is generated by parking fees and citations. A new 1,000-space garage should open in 2004.
"It is very hard to keep up with the demand," Sylvester says, driving a golf cart through campus. "We're constantly putting up new buildings, but sometimes at the expense of parking. See that retention pond? That used to be a parking lot. You have to be innovative and flexible." Recently he ordered re-engineering of the layouts at three existing lots. Voila! He gained 306 spaces.
"To me," he says, "reading books and going to classes is only half of your education. The other half is just coping with the world. That includes learning how to park."
* * *
Parking is a challenge at USF. But the situation at UF is a whole different animal. In Gainesville, even God's closest friends struggle to find a place to park. At St. Augustine Catholic Church, marriage counselor Bob Funkhouser prays for a miracle.
"The multiplication of parking spaces," he says.
The church is directly across the street from campus. Cars parked there invariably are adorned by white sheets of paper embraced by windshield wipers.
Last year parking patrollers issued 91,000 citations on the campus. Ken Hill was the author of many. At 47, Hill has been a parking cop for a quarter of a century. "Sooner or later, if you park in the wrong place, we'll get you," he says. Of course, he'll check his computer before he writes the ticket. If you're a known parking scofflaw, out comes the boot.
"I was booting this car one time - I was kneeling down by the tire - when the driver jumped into his car and tried to get away," Hill says. "I had to jump on the hood to stop him. He was a football player, a huge offensive lineman. Football players sometimes don't think the law applies to them, but it does."
If you don't pay your fines, you will not be allowed to register for another class or even graduate. And if there's a boot on your car, you won't be able to move it. It is easy to get booted on the UF campus. Simply neglect to pay three parking fines. Even if you pay, Officer Hill will boot your car if you rack up a fifth parking violation. He will boot you the following five times, too. On your 11th ticket, you will lose parking privileges until next year. If he catches you again, he will have your car towed.
Park illegally in a handicapped space and he will call for a tow truck. You will be towed if you park in a reserved space. Block a road or a driveway and you will be towed. If you are caught with a counterfeit parking permit - crafty students think of everything - you will be towed.
In Gainesville, the only thing more common than a "This Is Gator Country" placard is a "Tow Zone" sign. After a while, they blend in with the scenery.
On the last day of the spring semester, Nicole McKeen was in a gambling mood. The senior journalism major decided to park in the lot at Burger King. After class she hurried back, though hurry was hardly in her vocabulary on that steamy afternoon. She was nine months pregnant.
Her Ford Explorer was being towed.
"Please don't take my car," she implored the driver. "I have to pick up my daughter." Her 5-year-old, Savannah, was waiting for her mom at preschool.
"Once I've got a car on my truck, there's nothing I can do," the driver said. "But if you pay me, you can have your car back right now."
McKeen burst into tears. Her checkbook was at home.
An hour later, she made her way over to Depot Street, about a mile from campus, to an industrial neighborhood where dogs growl from behind the barbed-wire fences of several tow truck companies. As she arrived with $72 in hand, she saw the tow truck driver and offered him a single finger salute. He blew her a kiss.
* * *
Tow truck drivers generally aren't known for suffering sympathy pains. That goes double for an intense 38-year-old man who might as well be called the Prince of Darkness. Of course, Stan Forron has heard worse. He owns or manages the three busiest tow companies in town.
Apartment complexes and businesses hire his companies to remove illegal vehicles from their lots. His trucks - he has a fleet of 24 - work night and day.
"I just got a call a few minutes ago from a liquor store," Forron mutters. "The guy said, "We have 45 cars in our lot right now but nobody in the store. Come on over and do some towing.' "
Sitting in an unlit office, blinds drawn, he offers no apologies.
"You've got these kids who are away from Mommy and Daddy for the first time - free at last! - and they think they can do no wrong," he says, his bearded face illuminated only by a computer.
"But the truth is they don't respect other people's property. They park in a space that belongs to somebody else right in front of a sign that tells them not to. And then they're outraged at me! They're outraged at my staff! Somebody took a swing at my wife. Nobody is going to take a swing at my wife."
He considers himself a family guy.
"You ought to hear what I hear," he says. "This girl recently came in because we towed her car. She gets on the phone to her mom, says to her mom, "They towed my effing car.' It's all effing this and effing that. Okay. I'm not a prude. Understand? But I would never use that kind of language in front of my mother. And you know what? That girl parked in a handicapped space and then denied it. She lied."
Toy tow trucks by the dozen line his office shelves. Good citizen plaques - he sponsors a passel of kiddie soccer teams - hang from his walls.
"People hate us. Somebody shot at one of our drivers with an AK-47 last spring. We had one truck stolen and burned. But we're still here. Nobody is going to run us out of business."
It's lucrative. Four of his drivers made more than $60,000 last year. The more vehicles they tow, the more money they make.
"I keep them busy," Forron says. "During the fall semester, during football season, well, it's like I tell the wives of my drivers: "For the next few months, your husband's a- is mine.' "
