The SMCC campus in South Portland is notorious for having bad parking. Whether it’s the people parking badly or there are no spots at all. Students have complained time and time again that the parking situation is bad. The reason for the lack of parking is that SMCC has strict property lines, according to Tiffanie Bentley, who is the school’s Vice President of Operations. “SMCC has a finite amount of property to work with, “says Bentley, “It is being limited by the property owners and the Atlantic Ocean.”, SMCC  is a big campus, but at the same time, construction, plowing, or other yard work around the campus will restrict it from expanding. There are also businesses and shipyards surrounding the campus. If more parking were to be built, SMCC would have to construct a multi-floored parking garage just to begin to address the problem. This would be a good idea, though, it would take many millions of dollars and a lot of time to build, and in the short term would mean even less parking because equipment and building materials would have to be stored near the building site. 

Students who live on campus hold many parking spots. SMCC wants and encourages students who live on campus to have a vehicle on campus, in part because this helps such students to hold jobs more easily. Public transportation isn’t available on some holidays. So if a dorm student needs to work on that specific holiday, they will need a car, and if they are allowed to have that car, they will be able to get to work without any issue. 

A lot of factors contribute to the problem of there not being sufficient parking at SMCC. For many people, problems could be avoided by arriving earlier so that they didn’t have to settle for a grass spot. Students should arrive at school 20 minutes before their class, park further away in an area with spots, and wear warmer clothes if it’s cold. Finally, “SMCC is committed to ensuring all students have the same rights and access to college resources, Bentley tells The Beacon. The campus does not want to differentiate between commuter parking spaces and resident parking spaces.