First-year students might want to consider leaving their cars at home after the holiday break.

Parking will be tighter next semester when construction crews begin building a parking garage in Lot 5 next to Amon G. Carter Stadium. The garage is scheduled to be open by next fall’s season opener.

“You’ve gotta have it finished by the time football starts again, or else it’s crazy back there,” said Chancellor Victor Boschini, after the garage was approved early this month.

Crews will start construction after the final home football game on Dec. 6. In the meantime, first-year students will have to park down the street in Lots 3 and 4.

Kathy Cavins-Tull, vice chancellor for student affairs, warned students about the changes in an email Monday. She assured the campus that there would be increased lot security and 24-hour shuttle service from the overflow lots.

Cavins-Tull said the first-year students would not squeeze out faculty and staff who also use Lots 3 and 4.

Lot 5 currently has 611 parking spaces. The garage will hold 992 cars, said DeAnn Jones, parking and transportation services coordinator for the TCU Police Department. There will also be 153 surface parking spaces in the lot.

Both residential students and visitors will be able to park in the new garage.

The garage is the first of two planned for campus. The second will be built in Worth Hills after Brachman Hall is torn down in May.

The garages were approved on Nov. 7 at the fall Board of Trustees meeting. The construction will be funded “totally by TCU,” Boschini said.

“[It’s] really hard to get a donor to pay for a parking garage,” Boschini said after the meeting.

Boschini said he wasn’t sure how the construction would go because of the nature of the garages.

“Parking garages really aren’t that difficult to build,” Boschini said. “Ours are more difficult to build because we won’t build regular parking garages; we’re building ‘Garage’ma Halls,’ as I like to call them.”

The Lot 5 garage will not be as structurally complex as the Worth Hills garage. However, its location makes the construction more difficult, Boschini said.

“What’s now one level, they’re going to make three or four levels,” Boschini said. “So it won’t be as hard as [the Worth Hills] garage, but it will displace everybody for a while.”

Boschini acknowledged that the Lot 5 construction might cause parking problems.

“This one’s gonna be hard; we’re just gonna start on it and hope to make it happen,” Boschini said.