The recent decision by the General Services Administration to site a new federal courthouse in Eugene may trigger a domino effect that could force the University off a piece of city-owned property it leases for garbage collection, recycling services and storage.
The $70 million courthouse will be built on about four acres just east of the Ferry Street Bridge overpass, on property owned by Chiquita Brands International and neighboring business AutoCraft Body and Paint. The city has already negotiated with Chiquita to purchase its property for $4.1 million and hopes to have the sale finalized by April.
But negotiations are ongoing between AutoCraft owner John Woodrich and the city. Woodrich will have to move his business to make way for the courthouse, and he had protested the forced relocation when the city first began its campaign for the federal building. On Thursday he said that he has no problem with the courthouse being sited in Eugene; he just wants to make sure his business and his 29 employees are “taken care of.”
AutoCraft’s employees and supporters waged a campaign of their own in recent months, writing more than one hundred letters in an effort to sway government officials from choosing Eugene as the site for the new courthouse.
“We’ve been consistent from the beginning,” said Steve Cornacchia, attorney for AutoCraft. “AutoCraft does not wish to be a problem for anyone, but they have a unique business and a unique site.”
Therefore, any move the business makes will have to be to a site that meets the company’s “particular needs,” he said, which include a large space for doing auto-body work, and a new location that is as visible and convenient to its customers as its current location.
Woodrich estimated that 85 percent of his business comes from the University, Sacred Heart Medical Center and car dealerships located near the Ferry Street Bridge. Woodrich said his business, at 411 E. Eighth Ave., is located on the fifth-busiest street corner in the state, with an average of 200,000 cars driving by each day.
The city is examining the costs of relocating AutoCraft’s business to a new site, Eugene City Manager Jim Johnson said. Woodrich confirmed Thursday that the site AutoCraft is eyeing is a city-owned parcel of land on Franklin Boulevard, west of Louie’s Village restaurant and across the street from the Phoenix Inn. The land, which has been leased to the University for a few years, is less than a mile away from AutoCraft’s current location.
Johnson said the site has been surveyed recently, and AutoCraft is getting an estimate on the cost of building on the property and remodeling an existing building to render it suitable for an auto-body shop.
Woodrich said initial plans call for all but 6,000 square feet of the 22,000-square-foot building to be torn down and a 10,000-square-foot addition to be built onto the remaining structure. He also said University President Dave Frohnmayer was “being real helpful” and making the likely relocation go more smoothly.
Frohnmayer was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, the city also is getting independent appraisals of the AutoCraft lot and building. Johnson said that he believes the eventual figure for buying the property will be in the neighborhood of $1.5 million, minus the costs the company would have to pay to acquire the property the University currently leases.
The city’s lease with the University states that it would have to give the school notice of the impending sale but would not be responsible for paying any of the University’s relocation costs, Johnson said.
The University would likely have at least nine months’ warning, Johnson said, because the city’s sale agreement with Chiquita stipulates that the company’s workers can continue to work at the plant through the next growing season, which won’t wrap up until late December 2001 or early January 2002.
“Yes, University Facilities Services would have to move,” Johnson said. “But not until next December or January, so the University would have between nine and 12 months before they’d have to move.”
Greta Pressman, the campus relations manager for facilities services, said Wednesday that the University has leased the property from the city of Eugene for about three years, and currently uses the site for housing its recycling operations and garbage collection services, as well as for operating a surplus furniture storage center.
“We’re not quite sure what we’d do if we lost this space,” she said. “But I do believe we would be given lots of notice if it were to happen.”
Regardless of where AutoCraft moves to, Johnson said it may be months before an agreement to purchase its property is reached. He added that the company will be compensated for the forced move, and he doesn’t believe the business will be harmed in any way.
“I doubt that a site that’s three-quarters of a mile from their existing site and on the same side of the road could hurt their business,” he said. “I honestly can’t believe that a change of that length could have an adverse impact.”
Cornacchia, the attorney for AutoCraft, said the company has yet to find a location that meets its specific needs, but added that Woodrich remains “guardedly hopeful that the [courthouse] decision will not impact them negatively.”
The decision to site the courthouse in Eugene instead of neighboring Springfield was tough, said Bill DuBray, the executive director for the General Services Administration’s regional office.
“It was a virtual tie between the two cities,” he said. But the Eugene site had three advantages over Springfield: There is already a federal building in Eugene; the chosen site is just blocks away from Lane County Jail, which means a shorter transport time for prisoners; and the planned eight-story courthouse would be a better fit among the existing high-rise buildings in Eugene’s cityscape.
The fact that the owner of AutoCraft did not want to move played into the GSA’s decision, DuBray said, but he thought the city and the company’s owner were nearing a resolution that would be “equally profitable” for the city and the company.
Architects have started work on the new courthouse’s design, which DuBray expects will take about a year and a half to finish. Construction is scheduled to begin in mid-2002, with the building being completed sometime in 2004.