The condition of the laundry facilities, right, at the Eastgate Apartment complex reflects some of the prob lems the new management has run. into in trying to correct housing code violations such as the missing fire alarm in the photo in the lower left. Eastgate By CORLISS BACHMAN Daily Collegian Staff Writer Housing code violation notices have been served to Eastgate Apartments by State College Housing Code enforcement officer James Pettingill which require that by Thursday repairs be made to prevent water seepage into apartments and that heat be supplied to any apartments without heat. “We’re trying to do what we can;” Eastgate manager Gene Parenzan said. i“We want to have repairs made by tomorrow or Thursday at the latest, ” he said Tuesday. The biggest problem for several. Eastgate apartments has been with water leaking under sliding glass doors. Because of the severe weather, snow and ice have been accumulating on the balconies. When the temperature rises the ice melts and the water seeps under the doors and into the carpeting. The floors are cement, and in a few cases water has gone down to the apartment below, Parenza said. A few apartments have had problems with heat. Tenants in one apartment told Pettingill when he visited Eastgate for inspection Tuesday that they had been without heat for almost two months, Pettingill said. Another tenant, Michele Burnett, said the apart M < tk m Task Force says parking shortages will increase By TONY GRECO ! Daily Collegian Staff Writer A few years ago, the borough of State College attempted to make its new downtown parking garage popular by setting aside a day when patrons could ■ipark there free. | Borough officials placed an ad in a I local newspaper the day before the free parking day. Because of an error, the ad, as published, said there would be free parking in the State College Borough’s parking lots. ' “By 8:15 that morning,” State College i municipal manager Carl B. Fairbanks pays, “there wasn’t a single parking | space available downtown. Penn State | students and employees parked at j “free” meters on College Avenue. | Downtown employees who went to work | early found space, but those who went at s[Uieir usual time couldn’t find parking. JTThe only difference between that day ft-*nd any other day was that most of the |l;i7o parking spaces provided by the | borough were taken earlier than usual. | On Jan. 9, the long talked-about [downtown parking problem was made when it was described to the State College Municipal Council by wames J. McClure, chairman of the State College Parking Task Fprce, set up Past year at a cost of about $5,000 to study |he downtown parking situation. The lask force report savs-there is a shortage P f parking downtown,_and reports the problem wiLLgrow_oveiLthenexT five pears. James H. Miller of the Pennsylvania rransportation Institute at the Jniversity, consultant for thetask force, >ays 50 to 60 new spaces a year will be leeded “if there is a continuation of past the daily has code violations ment has been without heat since Thanksgiving. Because the apartment downstairs is vacant, the heat there has been turned up full blast, she said, and their heat comes up through the floor. “Now our floors are always hot, but on cold days it’s still cold,” Burnett said. “For those tenants who say they have been without heat, I have offered them heaters or put them in another apartment that has heat,” Parenza s,aid. “I don’t want the kids to be in a place without heat.” Much negligence in management had been taking place before this month, under Eastgate’s former management, Pettingill said. The maintenance man who worked for the previous management tried to comply with housing code office requests, but was handicapped by tight purse strings, Pet tingill said. Alpha Management Co. has recently taken over temporarily as mortgagee in possession of Eastgate Apartments. “I’ve only been here 11 days,” Parenzan said. “I’ve been bombarded with maintenance com plaints. We’re trying hard, but we would need 50 people on board to get this stuff done as quickly as possible.” —■iii trends with respect to automobile travel to the central business district. ’ ’ According to the task force’s report, the problem can be solved by improving the management of existing parking facilities and taking steps to increase parking capacity. State College Mayor Arnold Addison, who is pleased with the report, says, “It provided us with a planning document, and that’s a big start.” Council member Ronald F. Abler says the council will have to consider the~report very carefully. Stricter enforcement of parking laws is one of the proposed management improvements. At present, a major P mown parking meters for a longer period of time than allowed by law. Of the 275 on street meters, 94 percent have a one hour time limit, and the remaining 6 percent have 15-minute limits. According to the borough’s laws, a car can’t be parked at a meter longer than the limit specified on the meter, to allow .O®. Apartment management had too many problems By ANDY RATNER Daily Collegian Staff Writer . The Eastgate Apartment Manage ment Corporation has left town leav ing the status of about $60,000 worth of security deposits and rent money uncertain. Tenants of the complex may have to file a class action suit to get this money back, said Jeremy Abrams, Organization of Town Independent Students. According to Abrams, $43,000 iri security deposits, originally thought to be frozen in court, is hanging between the shuffling managements. After a conversation with Arthur Unger of Alpha Management, for a rapid turnover of the parking spaces. Meters in the Beaver Avenue and McAllister Street parking lots have 10- hour limits 24 hours a day, while the Fraser Street lot’s parking meters have a four-hour limit, except between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., when there’s no limit. There is no time limit in the Pugh Street parking garage. “An attempt is made to enforce these limits, but it’s not as sufficient as we would like it to be,” Fairbanks says. “The parking garage was intended to attract most of the long-term parkers.” The garage does attract most of the long-term parkers, but the municipal officials would like it to attract all of them. An interim report prepared by Miller for the council last July contains results of a one-day survey conducted downtown. The results show that 20 percent of the cars parked at the on-street meters stay there for more than four hours, while all day parkers (seven hours or more) fill 20 percent of the Fraser Street lot, 22 • •'VVv * <<’"l’ ■ ' V "‘ ~-—-c, The Organization for Town Independent Students had received many complaints over the past few days about the pile-up of snow on Eastgate’s parking lot. Tenants said they could not get their cars onto the lot because it had not been properly cleared. Cars parked illegally on Bellaire Avenue near the complex were ticketed by State College police. Snow removal equipment was hired, however, and the lots were plowed Tuesday, tenants said: There are other lesser .violations, such as broken windows in fire exit ways, for which notice has been served, but the time limit for these repairs is longer, Pettingill said. “Part of the problem in Eastgate has been the. great amount of' vandalism,” Pettingill said.' Windows are broken, "doors kicked in, and emergency lights and fire alarms have been damaged or stolen. “I don’t know if it’s being done by disgruntled tenants or unauthorized persons, but vandalism is the cause of much of the damage out there,” he said. Tenant Marty Scarano said he believes that many' of the vandals have been transient people, some of whom have lived in vacant apartments. currently in charge of Eastgate Apartments, Abrams said he learned that Alpha has no legal responsibility for the deposit money. Thus, Eastgate tenants might be forced to file suit against the Eastgate Associates and Joseph H. Jaffee, a general partner in that corporation, in order to regain their money. Maswest Inc., the corporation in charge of Alpha Management, has filed a slew of charges against Rojay Co., , the former management of Eastgate apartments, H. Denning Mason, Eastgate’s lawyer, said. Half of the 110 tenants paid their Continued on Page 13. percent of the McAllister Street lot, and 5 percent of the Beaver Avenue lot. The task force, in addition to calling for curbs on long-term parkers, 'recottimendeti'using-a maximum threeT hour time limit in the three lots, and removing the limit on the number of monthly parking rentals in the garage, which is now about 250. The task force also recommended an increase in parking rates to 25 cents an hour at all parking facilities, and from $l7 to $2O a month for a rented space in the garage. Miller’s report, assuming there is no decrease in utilization, in dicates that the rate increases would bring the borough an additional annual income of $85,793. Another task force suggestion regar ding the management of existing facilities is to experiment with compact car spaces. The concept, if tried out, would have to be tested carefully tb; evaluate citizen and ■. en-; forcement problems, McClure says. The task force says the most direct way to increase parking facilities is to Ot’i‘ * ' if s "' ?; .*>. ■•t i Photos by Richard Holtman Oswald orders power savings By ALLEN REEDER Daily Collegian Staff Writer University President John W. Oswald has ordered electricity conservation at all University campuses. He directed the Office of the Physical Plant to work with students, faculty and staff to eliminate non-essential use of electricity. The action was caused by the dwin dling coal supplies of electric utilities. The United Mine Workers have been on strike since Dec. 6. West Penn Power Co., which supplies roughly 80 percent of the University Park campus’ electricity, has about a 38- day supply of coal left today. It has asked for voluntary conservation by all customers. Moderate temperatures and the pur chase of power from the Pennsylvania- New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection have slowed the depletion of coal stock piles, a spokesman said. spokesman said. Conservation by business and industry is also helping, he said. The University’s Executive Energy Conservation Committee is working on guidelines to reduce power consumption by 10 percent, J. Carroll Dean, manager of the energy conservation program, said. The guidelines are to.be developed before West Penn orders further con servation measures. When a 30-day supply of coal is reached, West Penn will ask the Planned dorms By BRUCE ELLIS Daily Collegian Staff Writer If students in dorms cannot reduce their energy consumption by 10 percent starting about Jan. 30, then their elec tricity could, be shut off for six or seven hours a week, the Association of Residence Hall Students recommended last night. The coal shortage is at the heart of the recommendation. North Halls coor dinator Carol Kelly said West Penn Power, which supplies most of the power to the University, predicts it will only have about 30 days worth of coal by Jan. 30. At that date, she said, students would be asked to voluntarily decrease their energy consumption by 10 percent. ARHS president Dave Roth said that students could do that by simply turning their lights out one hour early every night. But, Roth said, if students do not reduce their consumption, and nothing else is done, the University could close Spring Term. To avoid that possibility, the ad ministration has been looking for ways to reduce energy consumpiton. If the University did not find a way to reduce it, then West Penn Power would prob ably cut off power themselves, Kelly said. If the ARHS proposal is adopted the administration is also considering construct an additional multistory, multimillion-dollar garage with space for at least 350 cars. > The best site for the garage is on borough-owned land adjacent to the municpal building on Fraser Street, where the police department-water authority building now stands. The building is to be torn down after the municipal building is remodeled. “Land in the downtown area is one of the hardest commodities to obtain,” Fairbanks says. McClure says the task force considers the Fraser Street site a “very prime” location, primarily because the borough owns the land. Council member Richard E. Kummer says the location looks very attractive. “I don’t think it’s too far from the business district," Kummer says, “and a garage there would give the municipal buildjng much-needed parking.” . The task fbree says the proposed Allen Street mall and a new parking garage could be united in a joint project. Under such a plan, pedestrian amenities would W 202 PATTEE 4 " COPIES I 15 ° Wednesday, Jan. 25,1978 Vol. 78, No. 108 14 pages University Park, Pa. 16802 I Published by Students of The Pennsylvania State University governor to order curtailment of certain activities. Museums and similar buildings will be closed and nighttime sports and entertainment will be cur tailed. Stores will be required to operate no more than six days a week with a maximum of 54 hours of operation. This step cannot go into effect without Gov. Shapp’s approval. He is expected to decide this week whether he will order these conservation measures. West Penn said they will probably be needed starting the week of Feb. 6. Dean said the University’s goal of 10 percent reduction of power use was decided upon within the University and is not part of West Penn’s energy plan. Members of the University com munity will be asked to comply with the guidelines set by the energy committee. If this does not result in a 10 percent reduction, “there will be specific directions issued on how and where activities will be curtailed,” Oswald said in a letter to University personnel. Starting today, measurements of the University’s power consumption will be made to determine the effectiveness of the various conservation efforts, Dean said. Shapp announced Monday that he would not provide police escorts for coal shipments to power companies. The Duquesne Light Co. in Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania Power Co. of New Castle had asked for such protection. West Penn told Shapp that escorts would be necessary if coal became available, but did not go so far as to request them. blackouts is possibility several other programs including turn ing off all elevators and most outside lights and scratching all cultural and athletic events the power would be shut off during the daytime for a pre planned, well-announced time period. Roth said the blackouts were a good idea because students would know when they were going to be without power and could plan accordingly. He did concede that blackouts could be inconvenient and upsetting to some people. East Halls president Kathy Howe said students could use the union buildings if they desperately needed electricity. ARHS debated several specific times for the blackouts, but finally decided the administration could make the best judgment. They did agree that the blackouts could be daily or bi-weekly until the UMW strike is resolved. Rain today, hut ... Mush and slush should give us a rush. Occasional cold rain today and tonight will melt at least some of the snow. Temperatures should hold in the upper thirties, so it will feel rather mild for a January day. However, winds will whip up and temperatures drop noticeably during the day tomorrow. Look out for snow flurries and occasional squalls by tomorrow night and into Friday, that will refreeze everything. include a direct walkway from the Fraser Street garage to Allen Street. The municipal council has been hesitant about the mall because once construction-on it began, 29 “prime” parking spaces on Allen Street would be lost. Carol M. Herrmann, a member of both the State College Planning Commission and the parking task force, says 70 percent of the cost of replacing the lost parking would be paid for by the federal government/ Ronald N. Short, regional planning director, says the federal funds would total about $lOO,OOO, and could help pay for the garage, which Miller says would cost between $2 million and $4 million. Abler says the question of whether or not to build an additional garage can’t be answered until costs and alternatives are thoroughly considered. Council president Ingrid P. Holtzman says she has never been in favor of an additional garage, but could probably be talked into favoring one if more parking is needed. The task force recommended that a garage study committee be appointed, and that $l,OOO be spent immediately to hire a design consultant to develop a site analysis. The task force hesitated to recommend a “full speed ahead" solution. McClure told the council it’s important to study the garage idea thoroughly. “We didn’t put council on a one-way street (with our recommendation),” McClure says. The task force also suggested that a surface lot be constructed on the Fraser Street site “as soon as the site can be Continued on Page 12.
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