The baseball fields and freshmen cars are here to stay – Biola’s board of trustees unanimously agreed this weekend to pursue building a five-story parking structure to alleviate overcrowding.

The structure will be constructed in lower Lot I, between the baseball field and the existing soccer field / parking structure. Lot I currently has 146 parking spaces and several motorcycle spaces. The new construction will add a net 613 additional spaces, enough to neutralize the parking crunch until at least 2016.

Construction is anticipated to begin in spring 2009 and completion could be as early as spring 2010. Other logistics issues are still being considered, such as how to accommodate the 146 cars that will be displaced while construction is underway.

Though the price tag on the structure will be about $11 million, tuition will not be affected and parking fees will increase minimally, if at all, according to Carl Schreiber, vice president of financial affairs. The money will come from debt service savings that resulted when Biola refinanced its variable rate demand bonds. This internal funding method is similar to the way the Caf remodeling project was financed.

Schreiber and Wayne Lowell, chair of the finance and audit committee of the board of trustees, said the timing was providential since Biola refinanced from variable to fixed rate bonds before the economy started derailing in recent weeks. The result is a source of money that is relatively insulated from the fluctuations of the market at large.

“We can really see God’s master plan at work,” Lowell said.

Since the completion of the parking structure below the soccer fields several years ago, Biola has been considering options for adding even more parking. Numerous controversial solutions were on the table, including eliminating the baseball program to use the field area and prohibiting freshmen from bringing their vehicles.

But according to Lowell, those options adversely affected large swaths of the student body. For example, 480 freshmen have cars on campus this year. And while other private Christian schools such as Westmont impose such a ban, Biola’s location and limited access to public transportation make it difficult for students to get around.