A new parking garage is open on the lower campus of the UConn Health Center, marking another milestone in the series of construction projects backed by the state investment known as Bioscience Connecticut.

Named Garage 1, the six-level parking structure has a capacity of more than 1,400 spaces, intended in the long run to supplement the UConn Health Outpatient Pavilion, an eight-floor clinical care building scheduled to open adjacent to the garage by the end of next year.

Employees who’ve been parking off-campus, in spaces the Health Center has been leasing, are being re-assigned to park in Garage 1. The first of those employees have started parking there.

“We’ve closed several leased lots, and those employees are parking here today,” said Cliff Ashton, associate vice president of facilities management, after cutting the ribbon on Garage 1 Wednesday. “We’ll be bringing people over from the Exchange after we make sure we have any bugs worked out here.”

The transition will save the expense of leasing 425 offsite spaces and allow a reduction in shuttle bus services to remote lots. A new shuttle bus line, known as Route 4, or the “Garage 1 Express,” now provides continuous service between the Main Road (Level 6) entrance to the garage and the academic entrance, with a frequency every five minutes during peak times. The revised shuttle schedules are available at http://bit.ly/UCHCbus.

“It should help out quite a bit, and it certainly is going to allow us to try to get people assigned closer to where they work, which should take a lot of pressure off,” Ashton says. “We’ve got a punch list of things in terms of a few signs we want to add and things like that, but so far it’s working real well.”

For the first few days, volunteers are serving as parking guides, wearing fluorescent vests and using bright orange flags to wave people toward available parking spaces.

“It’s just such a big garage, people aren’t quite used to it,” Ashton says. “Especially when it’s empty, it might not be obvious which way to go.”

Construction of Garage 1 was completed in nine months, on schedule and on budget.

“They just started in February and here we are in early November with an open garage. All the precast was done locally, and it just went quickly, working six days a week and getting it done,” says Maureen Godfroy, a project engineer with Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., contracted by the UConn Health Center to oversee the Bioscience Connecticut construction projects. “Originally it was supposed to be five levels, then we added the sixth level so it would connect to Main Road. The Main Road entrance is an employee-only entrance. There’s signage in place to reflect that. Patients will start parking here early next year.”

Employees assigned to Garage 1 are able to use their badge to lift the gate for access from Main Road or Circle Road. Patients will access the garage from the Circle Road entrance, which puts them on Level 2. When the UConn Health Outpatient Pavilion opens, a ground-level entrance will provide access to Level 1 closest to the outpatient building. Level 1 of the garage has not opened yet.

Free valet parking for patients at the Medical Arts and Research Building will continue, with plans to phase it out early next year.

The specific breakdown of patient and staff parking has not been finalized and won’t be before the outpatient building opens. Until that time, all employees parking in Garage 1 should consider their assignment temporary. Employees with questions about their parking assignments should direct them to parking.registration@uchc.edu.

Bioscience Connecticut, the collection of mostly state-backed construction projects with the long-term vision of making Connecticut a worldwide destination for bioscience research and health care, is credited with creating more than 1,000 construction jobs since breaking ground June 2012. More than 80 percent of the contracts associated with Bioscience Connecticut have been awarded to Connecticut companies.

Webcam images of the lower campus construction site, and the other ongoing sites, are available at http://bit.ly/UCHCwebcam.