By EMMA SCHULFER

The Mirror reporter

It costs $50 to park in the Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH). More students than ever are being forced to park in the lot because of the construction taking place on Prentice Street or as you may know is Sophomore Lane. Prentice Street gave SPASH students the opportunity to avoid the parking fee and still be within walking distance of the school.

Sentry is constructing a new 270,000-square-foot building. It will be seven-stories and will be located at 1501 North Point Drive, in-between Sentry’s national headquarters and SPASH. The office will be able to hold approximately 500 Sentry employees with room for expected growth.

I found myself being angry with the school for the high price of parking. But after doing a little digging I now understand why the cost of parking is so high.

SPASH has sold 725 parking passes this school year at $50 apiece. SPASH has made approximately $36,250 solely off parking passes alone.

Why does the cost of parking have to be so high?  When asked Main Office assistances said, “the money will be used to repave the parking lot in the next few years.”  According to ProMatcher the average cost of repaving a lot is around $1.48 per square foot. The average parking space is 180 feet so to repave one spot would add up to $266. Our lot has 758 spots so repaving the lot would cost around $201,931. It would take around five and a half years to rack up this much money on parking passes alone.

The construction also causes a second problem: The SPASH lot holds 758 vehicles and 725 passes have already been sold. It leads me to believe that the lot will be full by the end of first semester. Does the school have a plan if the lot fills up?