Parking Lot/Tailgate Changes

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pointman99

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Any other lots going through or already undergone the following(just received)? Ski-U-Mah Zone Map - https://www.mygophersports.com/ArticleMedia/Images/seatMapImages/TailgateLoadingPlanMap-SkiUMah.jpg

Since the opening of TCF Bank Stadium in 2009 Gopher Sports has continued to evaluate all aspects of Gopher football gameday. With five seasons of data to review, Gopher Sports has identified several public safety issues that have led to the decision to implement a change in the parking procedure in the Ski-U-Mah parking lot for football gamedays, starting in the 2014 football season. Gopher Sports goal is to create a fun and safe tailgating experience for all fans and the change below reflects this goal.

Starting this season all customers, with valid parking passes for the Ski-U-Mah lot will be directed to parking spaces based on the time they enter the parking lot, except for those customers entering within the first hour of official tailgating hours. Those customers arriving in the first hour will have the ability to choose any parking space located in Zone 1 of the Ski-U-Mah lot. Click HERE to view a map of the Ski-U-Mah lot. These spaces are available on a first-come, first-served basis for the first hour only.

All interior parking spaces will be loaded in a pre-determined order. After the first hour, the Ski-U-Mah lot will be filled in numerical order starting with Zone 2. Click HERE to see a map of the Ski-U-Mah lot and each parking zone. This process will start after the first hour of the parking area opening and continue through halftime of the football game.

These changes are necessary to ensure:

Public safety vehicles can access all areas of the parking lot.
Parking pass holders can easily access available parking spaces
Pedestrians stay clear of moving vehicles.
Tents and other tailgating accessories remain clear of moving vehicles.
We understand these changes may limit the ability to park in an exact parking space, but for all the reasons stated above these changes are necessary. This method of parking vehicles is used at stadiums across the country both at the collegiate and professional level.

If you would like to talk to a customer service representative about these changes or have additional questions please call us at 612-624-8080 (option 2). If you would like to explore moving your parking to another parking area please call us at the number above to explore your parking options.

Thank you for your support Gopher football.
 

That sucks! We have 3 spots, and the first and second vehicle always get there early enough to park in our desired location (Zone 2), and have been in the same spots since the lot opened. But the last car gets there ~an hour later… no way we will be able to park together (and we obviously want to as we eat, drink and socialize as a group). A easy solution would be to make sure we are driving into the lot together, but we are all coming from 2+ hours away from different outstate locations.
 

Yup, this is penalizing the loyalists. We have established friendships with the folks who park near us and they come from all over. This is to placate the few who show up 45 minutes prior to kickoff and drive through the lot disturbing the tailgaters to find the one or two open spots in the lot. It does suck and we should let the AD know about it.
 

I can understand the desire to do something to improve the traffic flow in the lot and will be interested to see how this is carried out. If they are really going to try to direct people where to park and to restrict people to certain areas at certain times, it will require an increase in the level of monitoring and personnel they have working on game day. As far as I have observed over the past five years, the person working the booth was often the only U employee in the lot. Others would cruise through from time to time, but I have rarely seen any employees working the lot. This new policy would seem to require at least a couple of more parking lot attendants to enforce.
 



Beaver & Golden Gun nailed it. Completely eff's the tailgate for my group. Would have been nice to know this before ponying up $1,000 to tailgate.
 

This is complete BS after making us re-up for next year already... they did it with lot 37 too

Why would they penalize the people who get there early???
 

I always parked in what is now "zone 3" as the spots we took had a large area next to it that was crossed out. The people that get there the latest will get one of the better places to setup a tent. Guess to get the few spots where you can have extra space i will just have to show up earlier than I already did and make sure I am one of the first 3 or 4 cars into the lot.
 

They need to direct the fun-sucks to their own non-tailgating lots that open at 10:59am.
 



Called over and got a line of BS that "this is what people said they wanted via our survey" and "the police have to be able to get to everywhere in the lot." Huh?
I encourage everyone to call. I wish they had announced this last week. Teague was standing about 20 feet away from me at the Sat. baseball game and I would have given him an earful.
 

Wont this cut down on the interruptions to your party? I get the gripe that this is in favor to the people who show up last but at the same time it will stop those people from interrupting your party and making you move out of the way.
 

I can understand the safety angle somewhat—there is some potential danger when a later arriving vehicle tries to wind through the lot to locate an open space. I have never seen anyone run over, but I have had someone hit my table (which was in the authorized tailgating space for my spot). Seems like they could solve that problem by having a couple of attendants who could escort the late arriving cars to open spaces.
 

The way they have the zones set up seems backwards the first ones there part anywhere in Zone 1 farthest from stadium.
 



I will probably get crucified for saying this, but I don't see how this is a bad thing. If you want to tailgate with your buddies, organize and show up together. No matter when you show up, you don't have to deal with the fan who thinks it's ok to drive through tents, cornhole, move grills and such just to get to their spot deep in the lot where there buddy has been saving their spot. If you want to tailgate do it right and show up early, if you don't want to tailgate, park in the ramp and save some cash.
Not sure if any of you complainers made your way to LA to experience how USC does their tailgate, but our group left San Diego at 4 am to drive up and be there when the lots opened, we were directed to the back of the lot and over a short period of time the lot turned into a festive city because everyone had their tents and TVs set up without a worry about another car about to drive through. Once you were in you could set up shop and that was that.
I know it's the offseason and the weather there sucks so people need something to bitch about, but come on. You still get to park in the lot, you still get to tailgate, you get to set up more without worry of disruption, and you are doing it for the love of a team you live to support.
I would give anything to be able to be back in Minnesota tailgating in Ski U Mah with GopherLady and my other friends, but I can't. Bitching about this change does nothing. Finding a way to get the most out of it is the way to go.
OK go ahead and slaughter me.
 

I personally like this option for the sake of that once the area is set up for tailgating, it isn't getting disrupted by people cruising through it. Yeah it sucks that if you have someone getting there later they may not be able to park by you, but I feel that eventually once this settles in it will be better. It will more tightly knit the tailgate areas in a wave-like fashion that will be more conducive towards having a good time. I know often when arriving early, there have been huge gaps between people tailgating with people saving spots for someone who shows up an hour or two later and then wants to fit in and everyone around has to move crap, get out of the way, etc. to let them park. I just think this is a good thing that should've been in place from the very beginning.

In this method, you get the diehards by the diehards (in tailgate terms) and those that are just coming for a few brews right before kickoff will end up by each other as well. In the longterm it will work out for the better from both a safety and gameday experience despite the fact that it may suck for the right now for those who have gotten to know who they usually tailgate by. Besides, let's be honest, once the areas get set up, if there is a known fact that there won't be vehicles coming through, it will give you a little more room to set up a little bigger spot and your buds can bring the stuff over and just join you. My hope/thought is that it will just help to more tightly pack the tailgating and thus lead to a better experience overall.

I will add a caveat to this. They should put zone 2 next to one and do this entirely in a wave fashion (1-->2-->3-->4 in order). But i'm sure this has to do with the fact of where the entrance is but it really just effectively segregates the lot in halves. I guess we shall see.
 


I hate this policy. It isn't feasible for our entire group of cars to meet every week to enter the tailgate together. Some weeks people have things going on in the morning that delays them. Other weeks it gets cold and some of the women and children in our group don't want to sit outside from 7 am until 2:00 to tailgate and watch a game so they'd like to show up closer to 9-9:30. If they can't park with us it defeats the point of me paying an extra donation to get multiple passes.

We also have become friends with about 5 other cars that tailgate near us. We share resources, food, etc. This makes that pretty difficult to do because if we want to continue doing something like that we'll have to meet at a location and drive to the lots together. It is just a ridiculous response placating to people that don't want to tailgate but would like to drive in to a lot with ease 10 minutes before game time.

I'm sorry, but this is a huge negative to the game day experience for me and my family. If the U is going to reduce the value of my donation by not allowing multiple passes in our group, under my name, to park together then I'll reduce the actual donation.
 

The silver lining - once you're set up, nobody else driving through.
 

AuEGO4 said:
I will probably get crucified for saying this, but I don't see how this is a bad thing. If you want to tailgate with your buddies, organize and show up together. No matter when you show up, you don't have to deal with the fan who thinks it's ok to drive through tents, cornhole, move grills and such just to get to their spot deep in the lot where there buddy has been saving their spot. If you want to tailgate do it right and show up early, if you don't want to tailgate, park in the ramp and save some cash.
Not sure if any of you complainers made your way to LA to experience how USC does their tailgate, but our group left San Diego at 4 am to drive up and be there when the lots opened, we were directed to the back of the lot and over a short period of time the lot turned into a festive city because everyone had their tents and TVs set up without a worry about another car about to drive through. Once you were in you could set up shop and that was that.
I know it's the offseason and the weather there sucks so people need something to bitch about, but come on. You still get to park in the lot, you still get to tailgate, you get to set up more without worry of disruption, and you are doing it for the love of a team you live to support.
I would give anything to be able to be back in Minnesota tailgating in Ski U Mah with GopherLady and my other friends, but I can't. Bitching about this change does nothing. Finding a way to get the most out of it is the way to go.
OK go ahead and slaughter me.
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I did. I don't care how they did it. This isn't a good policy to improve the Game Day experience at Minnesota. When we no longer have an NFL team in town to compete with and we're a BCS competitor with a 90,000 seat stadium that is usually filled then we can compare what we do with what they do. The dynamics of the situations aren't remotely comparable.

I can tell you this will lead to at least $1035 in reduced revenue from our group, maybe more, because we will downgrade at least one spot to a parking ramp spot since it is no longer advantageous to have all of our parking in a tailgate lot if the cars can't arrive separately and park together. It isn't much different to walk from 4th St. ramp than it is from across Lot 37 but the U makes a lot less money.
 

As a Ski-U-Mah lot user, I have mixed feelings, but I am mostly in favor it.

The old system was very inefficient, with lots of wasted spaces due to sloppy parking, etc. I am guessing the new system will not only direct parking, but direct in such a way to avoid creating unusable spaces. And I also guess the U is getting more revenue by leaving fewer spaces unsold. Fine with me.

Driving cars though a packed lot full of partying people and playing kids is potentially dangerous. I wondered why it was tolerated for so long. No one's game day experience is as important as the safety of a child. I buy the public safety argument.

I don't like the fact that a friend of mine can no longer get there early and hold a spot for me if I am late. However, having to plan ahead to caravan or (gasp) carry my stuff to his car I something I am pretty sure I can get over with liberal use of anti-depressants and psychotherapy. Or maybe electroconvulsive therapy. Or primal scream therapy.

It bums me out that we will no longer have a regular space that feels like "ours" in the Ski-U-Mah lot.

In my opinion, it is a near tragedy that Zone 1 is on the opposite side of the lot from where it should be. This I simply don't get.
 

Maybe if SOME early arrivers didn't act like dumsh!ts, block off aisles and take up 4-6 spaces per car, this wouldn't have happened. It was inevitable. I love Lot 37, but those of you that think "gameday experience" means take up as much room as you want wherever you want are...stupid. Stupid. Yeah, we took up 3 spaces for our two passes, so I am guilty, too. We got there pretty damn early, too. One spot paid for means...one spot. Weird concept.

"Not a good policy" seems to mean let me do what I want when I want. Bullsh!t.

Best solution is assigned spots, like the Metrodome. It actually works. Friends get put with friends.

Rip away.
 

MrC said:
The old system was very inefficient, with lots of wasted spaces due to sloppy parking, etc. I am guessing the new system will not only direct parking, but direct in such a way to avoid creating unusable spaces. And I also guess the U is getting more revenue by leaving fewer spaces unsold. Fine with me.
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I don't understand this logic. It isn't like there were cars sitting at the entrance waiting to get in but they couldn't in the past. The sold as many parking passes for the lots as the lots and demand allowed. There have been open and unusable parking spaces because the lots weren't full. Forcing people to park in zones based on times doesn't change that.
 

highwayman said:
Maybe if SOME early arrivers didn't act like dumsh!ts, block off aisles and take up 4-6 spaces per car, this wouldn't have happened. It was inevitable. I love Lot 37, but those of you that think "gameday experience" means take up as much room as you want wherever you want are...stupid. Stupid. Yeah, we took up 3 spaces for our two passes, so I am guilty, too. We got there pretty damn early, too. One spot paid for means...one spot. Weird concept.

"Not a good policy" seems to mean let me do what I want when I want. Bullsh!t.

Best solution is assigned spots, like the Metrodome. It actually works. Friends get put with friends.

Rip away.
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Your solution would be more palatable to me than the solution they provided. I'd much rather have assigned spots than this policy.

Call me crazy but I like parking with my parents who drive from much further away and struggle to get there as early as I do. I don't really like the idea of asking them to wake up earlier or us delaying our arrival to wait for them. It was quite nice to be able to share responsibilities for food prep and supplies and fit it in to each of our vehicles. This inconvenience will certainly diminish the quality of our tailgate for most games and will reduce the donation I give to the U. That money may have to be spent at a dealership upgrading our vehicle instead so that we can hold the equipment for the same size tailgate that will get condensed from two adjacent spots down to 1 spot. What a cluster****.
 

I've said this on the board a number of times: tailgating and parking should be two completely separate things. They may be adjacent to each other, but trying to completely combine them dampens the party in my opinion.

Now, I do realize that it sounds silly to remove the tailgate party from the literal tail gate of a truck or SUV, but the schools who do it best (roll backwards on the slide show) tend to have tailgates in park-like areas free from cars, push tailgates to the grassy areas at the perimeter of the lots, or have limited access lots for RVs and reserved tailgaters who get there early.

Of course, many of the schools near the top of the linked list above are in warmer climates than Minnesota, so I can see the appeal of being able to hop inside your vehicle to warm up. However, imagine the party if Ski-U-Mah and other areas had a drop off zone for people and equipment. Early arrivers can park and set up the tailgate, then the lot closes two hours prior to the game. Members of your party arriving later could be dropped off with their coolers or chairs. The driver could go park in one of the ramps and take a shuttle back to the tailgate area.

23rd next to the lot could be a 10 minute parking drop off zone once the lot closes to traffic. That's enough time for your friends to carry in their stuff and get back to their car to move it to a parking area rather than a tailgate area. I've also said the grass in front of Mariucci should be made into a tailgate zone similar to Ole Miss' Grove or Bama's Quad, and that the small parking lot at the corner of Oak & 5th would make a perfect loading zone. Same for Williams and McNamara and the small lots there as loading zones.

Combining parking and tailgating means that 90% of your area is devoted to storage of giant hunks of steel and rubber and traffic lanes that aren't really being used to capacity, but have to be reserved for the occasional late-arriver.

An actual tailgate zone can be held in a much smaller area, and creates more of a festive environment. See this video for examples (ignore the stupid title and that it was shot 3.5 hours prior to the game).
0:27 - 0:38 Tailgate in a park
1:00 - 1:04 RV area with limited vehicle access
1:32 - 1:41 Corporate tailgate area (a vendor who sets up and caters your tailgate for you) behind set
2:28 - 2:32 Another RV area with limited vehicle access
2:36 - 2:54 Tailgating pushed to the grassy areas at the perimeter of a parking area
3:13 - 3:20 Additional corporate tailgate area
0:00 - 0:10 Fraternity tailgate area (bottom center - dirt lot) and additional RV lot with shuttle to stadium (mid-top right) - Might be better seen on this video.

Or, this video, starting about 1:20, shows how if you do it right, ALL of your friends will be within a 5 minute walk - you don't have to worry about parking next to each other.

This video, starting around 3:05, shows just how much space is wasted with a parking / tailgate combo.
 

MrC said:
In my opinion, it is a near tragedy that Zone 1 is on the opposite side of the lot from where it should be. This I simply don't get.
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Maybe I am missing something but is this that big a deal? Yes, the inside spots in zone 1 are at the other end of the lot but zone 1 also covers the periphery of the lot. So technically the closest spots are in zone 1.
 

If this is as obnoxious and strict as it sounds like you'll lose STH who came to enjoy the tailgating. My parents included. They've had tickets for about 20 years, but have no direct ties to the U. They've met up with friends in the Ski-U-Mah lot who come at different times and make an event out of tailgating. Take away that ability you'll lose some people pretty quickly.
 

I checked out the policies of the other BigTen schools. Didn't find anything like this, but did see first-come/first-serve to lots at your donation level(not zones within). One or two also encouraged people looking for a "family" atmosphere to go to certain lots.
 

grunkiejr said:
I don't understand this logic. It isn't like there were cars sitting at the entrance waiting to get in but they couldn't in the past. The sold as many parking passes for the lots as the lots and demand allowed. There have been open and unusable parking spaces because the lots weren't full. Forcing people to park in zones based on times doesn't change that.
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You may be right. I based it on an experience where I gave my tickets away to someone who arrived a bit late and found the lot to be "full." The lot is certainly hard to navigate close to game time, with cars crawling though to the edges to find an fully open spot. In any case, if this does create capacity, perhaps the U can amend the requirements for a tailgate spot. Who knows...
 

zman said:
Maybe I am missing something but is this that big a deal? Yes, the inside spots in zone 1 are at the other end of the lot but zone 1 also covers the periphery of the lot. So technically the closest spots are in zone 1.
Click to expand...

Unless I misread the map, Zone 1 in Ski-U-Mah is farthest away from the stadium.
 

MrC said:
Unless I misread the map, Zone 1 in Ski-U-Mah is farthest away from the stadium.
Click to expand...

The way I read the map it also includes the whole periphery of the lot.
 

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