The University of Rhode Island is exploring funding options for a new multi-level parking garage as part of its 20-year campus master plan.
While in its initial stages, the garage is part of the comprehensive campus plan released by the URI Board of Trustees in September 2025. The plan’s goal is to modernize the campus, according to Abby Benson, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Administration and Finance.
“It’s just a concept,” Benson said. “It is depicted in our comprehensive campus plan that ideally we would have a parking garage or several around campus, but we don’t have any immediate plans.”
A parking garage building would cost approximately $60,000 per parking spot and relies on revenue streams the university does not have, according to Benson.
While immediate funding is a hurdle, university leadership is still mapping out potential long-term parking locations, according to Benson.
“It doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about how we could get there in the future,” Benson said. “But it’s not anything immediate. If you look at the plan, any parking garage we place has one in the Plains Road Parking lot, and it has one in the Fine Arts Center lot.”
If a parking garage is eventually constructed, it will be built over existing parking lots to avoid destroying green spaces and campus fields, according to Benson.
URI students have shared concerns about campus parking with Benson.
“I regularly hear concerns about parking,” Benson said. “I would say they’re often concentrated in the beginning of the semester. People are trying to find where they need to park and where they need to be; things settle down a little bit after that, but I certainly hear individual concerns around parking.”
With the ongoing construction of new buildings, some parking spots are unavailable, bringing a short-term challenge to members of the URI community.
“Part of the reason it’s tough is we have some investment going on in campus buildings,” Benson said. “We’re building two new residence halls, north and south of Flagg Road, and we’re replacing graduate village.”
URI has partnered with the Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority to help students and staff get to campus for free, allowing students to show their student ID to ride for no cost.
“We were excited to enter into this partnership with RIPTA to encourage multiple options,” Benson said. “I think public transportation is a viable option for some; it doesn’t work for others, but we want to make sure it’s as accessible as possible to our community.”
Benson said there are no plans to provide transportation for students traveling to the URI Bay Campus in Narragansett.
“They don’t [have shuttles running] currently,” Benson said. “We’ve had pilots in the past where we tried to look at the concentration of students going to the Bay Campus, but we haven’t had enough students to fill a shuttle. We’re not currently doing that.”
To learn more information about URI’s 20-year campus plan, visit the report on the comprehensive campus plan website.
