New package center to open

Students living on South Campus will have an additional package center next year located in Hinton James Residence Hall.

Rick Bradley, the associate director for housing and residential education, said the package center is being built because Morrison Residence Hall does not have the space nor amenities to account for the overflow of packages coming in.

Allison Fallon, a student package center employee at Morrison, said the third package center is necessary to keep up with the demands.

“It’s just that there is a lot of students living on campus,” Fallon said. “We need a third package center so that we can distribute packages more efficiently.”

Bradley said with a disproportionate number of packages coming into the South Campus location, there is a growing need for a new packaging center in the area.

“We have two centers currently, one in Spencer and one in Morrison, and about 80 percent of the total package volume comes in through the Morrison center,” Bradley said. “Based on the number of students that live on the south part of the campus, we had to identify another South Campus location.”

Bradley said Hinton James was the perfect location for the new package center.

“We needed a building that has existing facilities that do what it needed to do,” Bradley said. “We need access to a side parking space for trucks to come in and out and access buildings, and being able to secure it — Hinton James is really the only match for that.”

Because plans last year to make a new dorm on South Campus with a package center were canceled, the administration had to find a new solution, Bradley said.

“Without the ability to do that, we were already in the planning stages for a much larger package center to meet current demands and beyond,” he said. “When that project was not able to be funded due to cost, we moved to find a third location.”

Students currently working at the Morrison center are constantly dealing with the overflow of packages, said Krista Powell, a student package center employee at Morrison.

Powell said during the busiest times of the year, such as the beginning of school and the holidays, there is a huge influx of packages that the Morrison center simply cannot keep up with.

“There are times we have to finish checking packages after we are even closed and the staff will have to stay late,” Powell said. “And there is even a problem of finding enough shelf space, and even in the back, when we receive packages, we just have stuff all over the floor because there is not even enough room to properly hold stuff.”

But Powell said she is optimistic about the new center.

“There will be so much more space, especially because South Campus gets so much more volume of packages,” she said.

“It is not so bad in North Campus. Having two on South Campus will definitely even that out and make distribution a lot better.”

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