The Texas baseball parking issues, explained

As the program preps for its first season in the SEC under a new head coach, the Longhorns face a critical infrastructure problem around the Disch.

AUSTIN, Texas — The thing about Texas Longhorns athletics director Chris Del Conte is that he rarely has to apologize publicly.

Less than a year ago, Del Conte was justifiably named the Sports Business Journal’s Athletics Director of the Year several weeks before Texas officially locked up its third straight Directors’ Cup as the nation’s most successful athletics department.

On Wednesday evening, however, in the UT Touchdown Club located in the north end zone of Darrell K Royal Texas-Memorial Stadium at the annual Town Hall which serves as Del Conte’s State of the Union, he had to face more direct frustration than normal regarding the status of parking at the East Campus garage for baseball games at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.

It was an unusual situation because since arriving in Austin in late 2017, Del Conte has not just overseen sports programs on trajectories to collectively peak on the way to the SEC, he’s also overseen major capital projects and the growth of the football gameday experience while providing a high level of stability and competence after years of turmoil across the Texas administration, but especially in the athletics department.

But those capital projects and those changes in gameday experience were also a result of major change around the Forty Acres, including the construction of the Dell Medical School, which necessitated the demolition of the Erwin Center and the construction of the Moody Center, both of which removed scarce surface parking.

The same master plan that created the medical school also transformed the area around UFCU Disch-Falk Field, including the construction of a tennis center, the East Campus garage, and graduate student housing on Comal Street.

And while the East Campus garage and the tennis center have long since been completed, the graduate housing took longer.

Now Texas and Del Conte are facing a reckoning.

“I’ve been getting an earful about it from everybody,” Del Conte said in broaching the subject.

In the original master plan for the Blacklands area around the baseball stadium was fans heading to Disch-Falk to use the parking spaces available in the East Campus… but only until the graduate student housing was finished.

Now the 2,000-spot garage is split evenly between 1,000 spots for baseball fans and 1,000 spots for the graduate students who live in the new housing complex, cutting in half the capacity available for baseball games just as Texas moves to the SEC and welcomes new head coach Jim Schlossnagle.

With excitement around the program increasing, the lack of parking around the Disch is now taking center stage with limited surface parking options in the immediate vicinity, a situation exacerbated by the construction of the Moody Center.

There are still 2,600 surface spots available by the LBJ Library, but that’s a half-mile walk from the baseball stadium that takes 12 minutes or more. Texas used to have a shuttle bus company, but that went out of business during the pandemic, removing one potential solution for the problem, and leaving the athletics department considering the use of golf carts instead.

“I apologize for my communication,” Del Conte said. “That’s on me because we sent information out, we talked about it, but it did not resonate until people showed up to a game.”

Cobbling together parking by the softball stadium, next to the tennis center, and in the LBJ lot was a predictably unsatisfactory solution for an elderly woman in attendance, speaking in the moment for everyone trying to figure out how to see Schlossnagle’s team play without significant inconvenience.

“I will continue to work that out,” Del Conte said.

Surface parking at LBJ and in the East Campus garage are available to purchase on-site only with Longhorn Foundation members afforded access to a lot northeast of Disch-Falk. A ride-share drop-off is close to the stadium as well.

Right now, the current parking situation is “a price of progress,” as the Texas athletics director put it, but it’s a difficult price for Texas baseball fans to have to pay until there are some real solutions.