Forming an Opportunity

1. I have a belief that with AGR moving onto fraternity row, trucks will soon consume the parking lot making it very difficult for other students to park along row. Parking on UF campus is already limited, so many students experience difficulties in this process. To solve this problem, I believe that parking spaces should be created behind the houses on fraternity row where the woods are.

2. With AGR moving in, students will now have the need to find parking spaces that they are able to fit in because trucks are rather large for the parking spaces created by the University of Florida. The need will come from other students that are trying to find parking in the fraternity row parking lot, but are unable to find spaces when they need it. This was not a need last year because Pi Kapp was still in the process of building their house and TEP had just been kicked off campus, so students could easily find spaces readily available. Now, students have to find other places to park their cars or adjust their schedule to a time to park their car when spaces are available.

3. After talking to Michael Harrigan, a student at the University of Florida that also parks his car in the fraternity row parking lot, he expressed his concerns about not being able to find parking this year either. He did not realize that parking would be so difficult to come by when first hearing the news of fraternities moving on to row, but now knows that he must be strategic in his time to park his car. He noticed that many of the trucks are oversized and therefore commonly cross over the parking space lines.

After talking to Wes Biddle, another student at the University of Florida, he also expressed his concern with parking on fraternity row. Wes drives a very large truck too, so it is even more difficult for him to find a parking space that is large enough to park his truck. He saw how empty the parking lot was last year, but did not drive his truck on campus at the the time, so he never got to experience the ease of parking. Wes believes that if parking was built behind the houses, then students would have better access to park their cars without having to vigorously search for an open space.

After talking to Joey Guay, a student at the University of Florida, he did not seem as concerned about parking on fraternity row. Joey's concerns are limited because he rarely ever drives his car, so never experiences the difficulty when parking during popular times. However, Joey does agree that if there was more space created for parking cars behind the fraternity houses then this would help the flow with things for students, but does not want to see the environmental destruction that would result from building more spaces.

4. After speaking with students about this opportunity, it is interesting to learn about students concerns with parking their cars on fraternity row. Fraternity row used to be a parking lot that could always be relied on to have plenty of open parking spaces, but now seems to be usually full. It was most surprising to learn that students will often look to park in the UF Law School spaces located right across the street even though their decal does not match the parking lot making the vulnerable to get annoying parking tickets.

5. To conclude, I think that while creating another parking lot behind the fraternity houses would be helpful, it would also be very expensive to clear out that land which would also have a negative impact on our environment. As an adapted opportunity, I believe that this need can be satisfied if people take more care when they park their cars so that they are in the lines and available to have other cars park next to them. I believe that my new opportunity is a better and more economic approach to satisfying these needs. I think that it's important for entrepreneurs to adapt their beliefs based on customer feedback because at they end of the day we are focusing on needs of customers being satisfied.