DeKALB – Commuter students with yellow parking passes will find parking has reached new heights of accessibility for them. Seven parking lots have changed from requiring faculty and staff blue parking passes to becoming hybrid blue-yellow pass lots.

This change means students who use commuter parking will have more places to park, sharing the lots with faculty and staff.

There are seven buildings/landmarks the blue-yellow parking pass lots are closest to: east of the Peters Campus Life Building; east of the Chick Evans Field House; north of Barsema Hall; east of the Engineering Building; south of Jack Arends Hall; southwest of the East Lagoon by NIU’s entrance; and west of Gabel Hall south of the daycare.

The changes come after Parking Services found blue lots were being underutilized by faculty and staff in multiple areas, said Director of Facilities Management and Campus Services Laura Lundelius.

“We get complaints from students when they drive by blue lots and they see a lot of open spaces and are like, ‘well, why can’t we park there,’” Lundelius said.

Students living in residential halls are also seeing a clarification with their parking passes. Parking passes for these students are orange except for residents of Neptune Hall and Gilbert Hall.

Neptune Hall’s purple parking passes help differentiate that they can park at the top of the parking building. Gilbert Hall’s brown passes also help mark that they are the only ones who can park in the brown lot southeast of the engineering building.

“During COVID we gave some parking over on the east side of campus for Gilbert Hall residence specifically, and then we also allowed Neptune residents to be able to park in the top of the parking garage,” Lundelius said. “Well, all that was orange, along with everything on the west side of campus.”

The change of colored parking passes for Neptune Hall and Gilbert Hall residents aims to avoid ticketing of students with orange parking passes.

NIU’s updated parking map is available on its website.