Beginning Monday, residents of Sigma Nu and Mars will be looking for new parking spots, as the 24-student parking spots behind their houses will be lost forever to construction of the Munger Graduate Residences.

The project aims to house 600 graduate students at the center of campus, with priority being given to law students. Stanford will become the only top law school in the country to guarantee three years of housing to all law students.

However, the ambitious project also comes with a cost. Construction will commence at 8 a.m. every morning, Monday through Friday, for the remainder of the school year. A temporary road is being constructed, front lawns are being uprooted and trees are being removed and relocated while Wilbur field is being excavated for the parking structure.

Much of the work in the next month will center around moving five existing buildings on Salvatierra Walk — the Drell, Owen, Rogers, Mariposa and Serra Houses — to other sites on campus. The Owen and Drell buildings will be moved to the existing parking area located behind Sigma Nu and Mars in mid-April as preparations are already under way.

This move will permanently eliminate all 75 parking spots in that area, including 24 “SO” student permit spaces, 41 “A” permit spaces and 10 metered parking spaces. To make up for this loss, the street parking spaces in front of Tresidder on Mayfield will be converted to SO spots while those south of Campus Drive will now be made available to SO permit holders in addition to the current SJ permit holders.

Munger construction ousted the Bridge Peer Counseling Center from Salvatierra Walk to a temporary location behind the Graduate Community Center. The Bridge will move to a new home in the relocated Rodgers House in the Tresidder parking lot by fall 2006.

“Our main concern with the project is the decreased visibility of our new location,” said senior Alex Rivas, a live-in at Bridge. “The number of students dropping in for counseling has dropped precipitously. We fear that while people know about the Munger project, they do not know that we have moved, and might not know where our new location is in the fall. We hope to work with the Munger project to come up with sufficient funding to make it known we still exist.”

Construction is also affecting Row residents through increased noise, partial loss of the Mars front yard and newly placed fences in front of houses to contain the construction. Senior Barrett Sheridan, Mars financial manager and a columnist for The Daily, requested earplugs, a housing bill and parking permit financial compensation in a letter to University officials. He was promised earplugs for his house, but had not yet received them. There has been no response to his other requests.

“The fencing [on the Mars front yard] is an eyesore and makes eating and relaxing outside much less enjoyable,” Sheridan wrote in an email to Susan Rozakis, a Munger project manager.

The Mariposa, Serra and Rogers buildings will be moved to the Tresidder lot across from the Bechtel International Center. In order to move these houses, a fenced temporary road is being laid between Mars and Sigma Nu. After the houses are moved over spring break, the road will be removed again for the lawn area to be restored. According to Rozakis, moving will take three days total, one house a day.

“Safety is extremely important on all of our project sites,” Rozakis wrote in an e-mail response to Sheridan. “The fence will remain in place until the houses are moved and the lawn restored. At that time, the temporary fence on the Mars/Sigma Nu front lawns will be removed.”

Moving the three houses to Tresidder will permanently eliminate 120 parking spots in the Tresidder lot, of which 80 are A spots and 40 are metered parking spaces. Parking and Transportation Services (P&TS) is gradually converting C parking spots to A and student permit spaces, because these permit holders have priority.

“Everyone feels inconvenienced [by the construction] to some degree, but the most inconvenienced will be those with C permits,” said Phillip Garcia, parking services manager. “They are being forced out as a result of this.”

Many students on the Row have been advocating for compensation for the costs of their parking permits as a backlash of construction. But Garcia “does not forsee this happening” because utilization surveys show that only half of the residents in Muwekma, Columbae, Mars and Sigma Nu actually park in the 24 students spaces in the lot and the new spots being converted for them are in “relative proximity” to the current spots. More surveys are scheduled for next week and P&TS will continue to make adjustments based on the results.

Some Mars residents were also upset about the impending death of some woodpeckers living in the palm tree in front of the house, scheduled to be torn down. To protest, they made signs, displaying messages such as “Peck you,” “Please don’t kill us” and pictures of Woody the Woodpecker. Residents posted the signs on Wednesday on the construction fence under the tree only to find them removed on Thursday morning.

Rozakis informed Sheridan that Stanford conducts bird surveys prior to the relocation or removal of trees, which showed that “there are no active nesting birds in the trees that were relocated or removed at or around the project site.”

“The contractor owns and maintains the project site and the fences,” Rozakis wrote in her email to Sheridan. “Please be advised that posting of unauthorized signs/graffiti can be considered vandalism to their property.”

In preparation for the new, four-level, 1,227-stall parking garage under Wilbur Field, 125 EA parking spaces in the current Wilbur lot as well as spaces from Stern and the Law School lots will be eliminated. To help alleviate these losses, the parking lot where the Wilbur Modulars were located is being restored and will offer 143 new parking spots.

In addition, a temporary parking lot will be constructed between Stern Hall and Wilbur Hall off of Arguello Mall (next to the basketball courts) and will accommodate 108 student parking spaces. The lot will likely not be completed until summer or fall.

“Overall, our residents have been surprised and upset by the lack of warning about the construction and the failure of the University to offer any concessions to inconvenienced residents,” said senior Chelsea Reinhardt, Mars kitchen manager. “Despite being told repeatedly that the University ‘values student input,’ we have yet to see any of our requests acted upon.”

More information on the project and construction and parking advisories can be found at http://mungerhousing.stanford.edu and http://transportation.stanford.edu/construction.