MARQUETTE — The new UP Health System-Marquette hospital slated to open on June 2 is short on employee parking, officials say.

“In the process of preparing for our move to the new hospital, we have discovered a significant oversight concerning parking capacity at the new campus. At present, we do not have enough parking spaces to accommodate all of our employees,” said Victor Harrington, regional director of marketing and business development at UPHS-M, in a prepared statement.

The situation is a result of an unfortunate miscalculation made by a vendor partner and one that was not caught early enough to make the necessary adjustments, Harrington added.

With about 2,000 people employed at the hospital, around 1,100 of them are on site every day. Parking spaces could be short by several hundred spaces on a busy day, Harrington said.

“If you were to assume a really high census, we could be short by several hundred spaces — worse case scenario,” Harrington said during a phone interview this morning. “We’ve got an average of 120 to 200 inpatients.”

If there’s around 1,500 to 1,600 people at the hospital, with staff, patients and visitors included, that’s when parking problems could occur, Harrington said.

“We want to assure the community that this parking shortage will not impact our patients or visitors,” he said in the statement.

The hospital is currently evaluating several short-term solutions to address the issue and help minimize the impact on staff, Harrington said. The hospital is also working on a solution to fix the issue permanently, he said.

In response to hospital’s announcement during national nurses week that an “oversight” has resulted in the new facility not having adequate parking for staff, Stephanie DePetro, President of the MGH RN Staff Council, issued the following statement:

“Market President Brian Sinotte has yet again disrespected nurses, our patients, and our community. Nurses being able to park at our hospital is a matter of basic safety both for our patients and for ourselves. This so-called ‘oversight’ is just the latest example of Duke LifePoint’s incompetent corporate attitude prioritizing the bottom-line over safe patient care. The administration needs to immediately find a long-term solution to this problem and listen to nurses when we say that patient care must come before profits.”

The new campus along Baraga Avenue, a nearly $340 million investment, will replace the College Avenue facility the hospital has inhabited since 1915.

Jaymie Depew can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 206.