As of Monday, NIU resident students and graduate assistants are receiving some relief from the university’s cramped parking situation with about 209 new orange and green sticker coded parking spaces.

Lynn Fraser, NIU campus parking division manager, said revisions were made on three university parking lots during the weekend to make way for “better utilization” of NIU parking.

Fraser and NIU parking committee chairman Bob Bornhuetter, held an urgent meeting with four NIU officials, without prior consent of the parking committee because the demand for parking spaces was so pressing.

Fraser said that 88 spaces from the east side of Lot 2 have been formed into a new Lot 1 and recoded from blue-sticker faculty/staff parking to accommodate both faculty/staff parking and green-sticker graduate assistant parking. The lot is located on Lucinda Avenue, south of Anderson Hall.

About 21 spaces have been partitioned from the west side of Lot 15, which is located between Lincoln Terrace and Locust Street south of Founders Memorial Library, to create Lot 15-B, Fraser said. She said that the new lot will accommodate blue and green coded sticker parking, Fraser said.

She said that Lot G, north of the Student Recreation Center, has been changed to Lots G and E. Lot E will remain yellow-sticker commuter student parking, and Lot G will be changed to orange-sticker resident student parking. Lot E will contain 100 spaces, she said.

Fraser said the changes were made based on information from a study that the parking division recently conducted to determine whether parking spaces were being efficiently utilized.

She said a “week’s worth” of spot checking was done on lots suspected of inefficient parking. “We made decisions on the changes based on (the spot checking),” she said.

Bornhuetter said the study found that several spaces in Lots 2, 15 and G were not being used. “We made alterations so that people can use those empty spaces,” he said.

Fraser said that because the study found that the lots had several empty spaces every day, “We felt we had to keep up with the demand and let other people use the spaces.”

Fraser and Bornhuetter said they believed the demand for parking space was so high that instead of waiting to discuss the changes with the rest of the parking committee, they called a special meeting with Jim Harder, NIU vice president of business and operations; Bill Parker, associate vice president of business and operations; Robert Albanese, NIU comptroller; and James Elliot, NIU director of public safety.

Bornhuetter said that the decisions would had to have been set aside another week if he waited to confer with his entire committee. “Rather than wait for another month and let the poor students suffer, I took care of it last week,” he said.

Letters were sent to each member of the committee to notify them of the changes, Bornhuetter said.

Fraser said that additional revisions might be made to university lots after two new lots and a lot extension are completed in mid-October.

The new lots include Lot A, east of Anderson Hall and Kishwaukee Drive; and Lot 38, south of Gable Hall on Annie Glidden Road, Fraser said. She said that an extension will be added to Lot P, which is west of Stevenson Towers.